GILDER-COIGNEY INTERNATIONAL THEATRE FORUM
A Project of New Perspectives Theatre Company
Mission
Our Mission in Action Includes:
Creating an international forum
via a dedicated website to provide a common space for dialogue, outreach, and the sharing of information and resources to theatre women around the world.
Developing ongoing programs
that support artists’ ability to present their work and find like-minded collaborators across borders.
Serving as a research hub
for a broad scope of information (articles, published studies, statistical data, anecdotal materials, etc.) on issues critical to the aspirations and realities for theatre women everywhere.
Initiating/expanding conversations and investigations
that can lead to more equitable outcomes for artists in communities that are marginalized and those whose voices are suppressed by political, cultural, geographic and economic factors.
History
This project builds upon the triennial Gilder/Coigney International Theatre Award (GCITA) program, created and administered by the League of Professional Theatre Women.
New Perspectives Theatre Company’s THEATRE FROM THE STREETS (TFTS) Program was inspired by GCITA and allowed us to offer a virtual performance platform for 50 artists in 5 countries to create short plays that revealed the lived realities of those who cannot speak for themselves to the wider world.
With the GC Forum, NPTC is expanding this work to spread our vision of Theatre as an essential tool that speaks to a collective humanity and engages artists and others in making a difference.
Honoring Gilder & Coigney
Rosamond Gilder (1891–1986) was a founder of the International Theater Institute (ITI), a worldwide organization created to provide a means for theatre people to exchange information that was free of government pressures. Gilder was the institute’s president from 1947 to 1975 and its honorary president at her death. She was also president of the Institute’s U.S. Center, which is headquartered in Manhattan.
Gilder was a founder and former vice president of the American National Theater and Academy, and on the staff of Theater Arts magazine from 1924 to 1948 (its editor in chief from 1937–1948.) She was editorial secretary of the National Theatre Conference (1933–1936), director of the Playwright’s Bureau of the Federal Theatre Project (1935–1936), a former secretary of the New York Drama Critics Circle, and an honorary member of the London Drama Critics Circle.
Martha Coigney said of her: “The International Theatre Institute was founded in 1948 in Prague. Rosamond went there with Clarence Derwent and Warren Caro at the dawn of the Cold War, beyond the help or influence of American diplomacy. I think Rosamond Gilder founded or assisted at the birth of most of America’s theatre networks. Rosamond brought a quiet, relentless passion to her work in spreading theatre knowledge across America … she helped America become a nation of theatre.”
In 1948, Gilder received a Tony Award from the American Theatre Wing, and in 1964 she was admitted to the French Order of Arts and Letters.
Martha Coigney (1933–2016) continued Gilder’s work with the ITI, serving as director of the ITI’s U.S. Center from 1966 to 2003 and as president of the Worldwide ITI from 1987 to 1995, when she was awarded UNESCO’s Picasso Medal and was made honorary president of the ITI for life.
“In 1967, ITI hosted 150 delegates from 46 countries. We all went to the UN General Assembly to hear the diplomats ‘debate. Afterwards, listening to the UN delegates argue, the Soviet delegate said, ‘All week we have talked about theatre and solved some problems about the future of theatre. We are the diplomats.’
“ITI taught me that theatre could make peace. Where else could you have a dinner in a tree? Six of us settled into the branches of a large and gorgeous tree. Rosamond Gilder asked if the mosquitoes would bite, and the ITI delegate from Bucharest, who had arranged for this dinner, said no, and they didn’t. My love for theatre turned into a conviction that ITI and exchanges within international theatre could make peace.”
Our Team
Program Directors
MELODY BROOKS is the founder and Artistic Director of NPTC. She is an award-winning producer, director and dramaturg who has been working in the professional theatre and various educational institutions for 40 years. She leads NPTC’s Women’s Work Project, which develops new plays by 10-15 writers each year and rediscovers women who wrote plays in the past through the ON HER SHOUILDERS component. Brooks has been honored with a “Trailblazing Women and Arts Institutions” award by RhythmColor Associates, the “Spirit of Hope” Award from Speranza Theatre Company for her career-long track record of supporting women theatre artists, and was named a “Person of the Year” in 2009 by NYTheatre.com as a co-founder of 50/50 in 2020, a grassroots initiative focused on wage and production parity for women theatre artists and reclaiming the 1,000 year heritage of women in theatre. Most recently, Brooks was honored with the “Lee Reynolds Award” from LPTW, given to a theatre woman “active in any aspect of theatre whose work for, in, about, or through the medium of theatre has helped to illuminate the possibilities for social, cultural, or political change.” She co-produced the Gilder-Coigney International Theatre Award Program from 2014 to 2023.
JOAN D. FIRESTONE is an advocate, strategic communicator, negotiator and consensus builder. She has held policy level positions in the profit, nonprofit and government sectors. An Off-Broadway theatre and events producer, Firestone maintains an active role in the theatre community in the development of innovative new works promoting social change. She is a fierce advocate of arts education throughout the public schools. A former co-president of LPTW, she was Director for the 2020 GCITA Program, and Co-Director for the 2023 Program. A former Executive Director of the Moth, she serves on the Education Committee and the Boards of En Garde Arts, and New Yorkers for Culture and Art (NY4CA).
In a career dedicated to the arts and education, Firestone was Assistant Director of the New York State Council on the Arts, Director of Economic Development and Cultural Advisor to the NYC Comptroller, Special Arts Advisor to the NYC Schools Chancellor, Vice-President of Public Affairs at Primary Design Studio, Executive Director of the Flushing Meadows Park Association (charged with renovating the old world’s fair park) , and Executive Director of the Moth.
Theatre has played and continues to play a prominent role in her work particularly within the non-profit sector, in companies devoted to socially relevant theatre. She was Board Chair of the Cherry Lane Theatre and Board Chair of En Garde Arts, on whose board she continues to serve. As Board member and co-president of the League of Professional Theatre Women, she served on the International Committee and assumed a leadership role in the Gilder-Coigney International Theatre Award Program that stimulated an enduring commitment to maintaining a close working relationship with our theatre colleagues across the globe who are effective cultural diplomats and change agents.
Associate Directors
LINDA CHAPMAN is Project Co-Director of the LGBTQ+ Artists Archive Project with The Pick Up Company and Founding President of Youth Arts New York, which provides experiences in the arts, science and civil society to engage youth in building a future of peace, social justice, and sustainability. She recently retired as Associate Artistic Director of New York Theatre Workshop after 26 years. Prior to this, Chapman was Managing Director of The Wooster Group and co-producer of DYKE TV, a grass roots, public access program, made by and for the lesbian community. She is co-writer/performer of the Obie Award-winning Gertrude and Alice: A Likeness to Loving with life partner Lola Pashalinski, directed by Anne Bogart. With playwright Kate Moira Ryan, she co-adapted Ann Bannon’s lesbian classic The Beebo Brinker Chronicles. The play was awarded a GLAAD Media Award and nominated for a Lambda Literary Award. Chapman was Co-Director of the 2023 Gilder/Coigney International Theatre Award Program.
MALINI SINGH MCDONALD a native New Yorker, received her BA in English and Theatre and an MPA from Baruch College MPA, and an MFA in Directing from the Actors Studio Drama School. Singh McDonald is the founder of Theatre Beyond Broadway which provides a platform to promote and support independent artists beyond the commercial theatre. She the Executive Director of Black Henna Productions, a boutique theatre company producing original and classic works throughout the five boroughs. Singh McDonald is a member of the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society and has collaborated with The Anthropologists, Broadway Artists Connection, Non-Disposable Productions, NPTC and Mind the Art Entertainment. She previously served on the board of LPTW as Co-Vice President of Communications, and Director of Media and Communications for the Gilder/Coigney International Theatre Award Program. She received the Woman of Distinction Award for her contribution to Media, Arts and Culture from the City of New York
Program Manager
SHREYA AMBATTI is a dynamic theater artist and a recent graduate of the University at Buffalo, where she earned her B.S. in Business Administration and Marketing. Beyond her focus on business, Shreya maintained a passion for theater, performing in notable university productions such as Kissed the Girls and Made Them Cry by Arlene Hutton and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon. Her curiosity for the craft extended beyond the classroom as she explored global theatrical traditions and performance styles through a world theater course while studying abroad with Semester at Sea. Through this experience, she witnessed the art of performance from South Asia to the Middle East, the Mediterranean, and Southern Europe. Her international experience doesn’t end there; she also sought to understand more about the business practices and cultural implications of working in Singapore and Vietnam. As program manager for the Gilder/Coigney International Theatre Forum, Shreya is extremely excited to create awareness for global artists through a platform that removes censorship barriers and promotes art as a form of diplomacy.
NPTC Associate Program Managers
PENELOPE ROSE DEEN (She/Her) is a special recognition graduate of Hunter College with a Women & Gender Studies/Theatre Double Major and a Dance Minor. She made her Off-Broadway debut in 2019 as the lead in the internet-famous feminist musical Oceanborn. An Award-Winning producer and actor, she is a founding member of the Torch Ensemble, which has performed at EdFringe, NYC Fringe run, and is currently in residence at Under St. Marks. She has performed in multiple Off-Off Broadway productions, including New Perspective’s Women’s Work Projects, where she works as an Associate Program Manager. During the week she works as a Dancer, Choreographer, Dance Teacher and is a published model. Penny is known for her activism, mostly in regard to Sexual Assault with her organization “Save Title IX.” Last season she produced The League Of Professional Theatre Women’s: Women Stage The World March for gender equality in Theatre.
ASHLEY HAJIMIRSADEGHI is an Iranian American multimedia artist, journalist, and writer from Baltimore, Maryland. She is the recipient of awards and fellowships from the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa, U.S. State Department, Fulbright Program, University of Arizona, and Brooklyn Poets. She received her M.A. in Global Humanities from Towson University, and a B.S. in International Trade & Marketing from the Fashion Institute of Technology. Her creative poems, essays, and fiction have appeared in Passages North, Salt Hill, Salamander, and The Journal, among others. Previously, she was a film & television critic at MovieWeb. She is the author of the chapbooks cartography of trauma (dancing girl press) and cinephile (Ghost City Press). She has been a ASSOCIATE PROGRAM MANAGER with NPTC since the fall of 2020, responsible for social media and the website, as well managing as the creation and launch of 1,000 Years of Women Writing Plays: the ON HER SHOULDERS database.
Image Credit: André Chung
About New Perspectives Theatre Company
NPTC is an award-winning, multi-racial company performing at its home in the NYC Theatre District, communities throughout the City and, as of 2015, internationally. Artistically, we are interested in returning theatre to its ancient role of gathering the community to examine social, political and spiritual issues that affect us as individuals and as a whole.
Visit our main website to learn more about New Perspectives.
Supporters
Kansas State University Foundation
Contact Us
Email: gcinternationalforum@newperspectivestheatre.org
Address: 458 W 37th St, New York, NY 10018