About
The Orchard Project is where new work is seeded, nurtured and grown.
We are a development lab and accelerator for plays, musicals, television, audio and forms that don’t have names yet, working in New York City, in Saratoga Springs and online.
We ask artists what they need, then build support around their vision. Emerging or established, solo or collaborative, they find time, space and a community that challenges them and grows with them.
What we do
Labs
The Performance Lab in Saratoga Springs, the Episodic and Audio Labs, the year-long Greenhouse in New York, and Homegrown Labs for returning artists.
OP Forward
Support that continues after the lab: professional development, industry partnerships and community, now including the OPportunity Fund.
For the field
The Leadership Lab and Notes 2.0 with The Kaleel Jamison Consulting Group, plus Open Process conversations and writing.
For audiences
The Summer Arts Festival in Saratoga Springs, where the public sees work in progress, and theatre trips such as our annual London Tour.
Our story
From a two-week pilot to more than 2,000 resident artists
In 2008, Artistic Director Ari Edelson took the helm of the Jean Cocteau Repertory and reimagined it as The Orchard Project, launching with a two-week pilot in Hunter, NY for three projects in development.
Demand grew, and in 2015 OP moved to Saratoga Springs, NY, doubling its support for creators by expanding labs, launching public programs and broadening community connections. To date, OP has supported more than 2,000 resident artists and keeps deep relationships with its alumni.
Work that started here
Developed at The Orchard Project
All the Way
by Robert Schenkkan · Performance Lab, 2010 and 2011. Tony Award, Best Play.
An Octoroon
by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins · Performance Lab, 2010
The Aliens
by Annie Baker · Performance Lab, 2010
33 Variations
by Tectonic Theater Project · Performance Lab, 2008
The Shipment
by Young Jean Lee · Performance Lab, 2008
Bhangin' It
by Sam Willmott, Michael Lew and Rehana Lew Mirza · Performance Lab, 2015
The Park
by Amy Jephta · Episodic Lab, 2017
BaRoQUe'BLaK TaP CaFe
created by Savion Glover · Performance Lab, 2019
Work developed at OP has gone on to Broadway and the West End, LCT3, the Public Theater, BAM Next Wave, New York Theatre Workshop and the Joyce, to Audible and to film and television. It has won Obies, Drama Desks, Olivier Awards and the 2014 Tony Award for Best Play.
Past resident companies include Tectonic Theater Project, the Royal Court, Elevator Repair Service, the Public Theater, Pig Iron, the Rude Mechs, American Repertory Theater and Mabou Mines.
Our values
Empowerment
The Orchard Project is a strength-based organization. We support, trust, and empower artists and staff to further our shared mission, and commit to developing the confidence of every stakeholder’s individual talents and capabilities.
Integrity
The Orchard Project welcomes accountability and conducts our business with honesty and transparency. Our hope is not only to put work into the world whose content reflects our values of integrity, but moreover, to live our values by embedding our processes with integrity wherever possible.
Community
The Orchard Project values a creative process that highlights collaboration both inside and outside the room. We center collaborations, and our work is grounded in the needs, desires, and sustainability of the artists we support, prioritizing long-term artistic relationships. We intentionally engage artists locally, nationally, and internationally, working across a multitude of processes and aesthetics.
Flexibility
The Orchard Project recognizes that artistic processes and forms evolve and are as varied as the human beings exploring them. We evolve our perspectives, practices, resources, and partnerships in order to stay relevant and responsive to artists’ needs.
Inclusion
The Orchard Project supports artists across all spectrums, with an emphasis on underrepresented and under-supported voices. We proactively engage and welcome people of all abilities, ages, cultures, ethnicities, genders, incomes, races, religions, and sexual orientations, and understand the power of supporting diverse aesthetics and the evolution of forms of dramatic practice.
Advocacy
The Orchard Project fights for a field in which storytellers and makers can thrive. We are committed to modeling how institutions can authentically support the art of storytelling, and connect artists’ work to audiences around the globe.
Accountability
Anti-racism and accountability
The Orchard Project opposes systemic racism and racist behaviors. We fully acknowledge the magnitude of pain and distrust inflicted on others due to racism, even unintentional. We are committed to listening, learning, and acting to eliminate racism, and commit to ongoing organizational evolution in order to be inclusive and welcoming, supporting the development of stories and artists from every possible background and point of view.
We acknowledge that we have not always lived up to these values. We hold ourselves accountable for our past and current actions and commit to learning, listening, and doing better. To that end, we commit to:
- Communicating our anti-racist ethos in our mission, plans, job descriptions, handbook, artist code of conduct and publications.
- Training on racism and anti-racist practice for our board, management and staff, with shared protocols to disrupt harmful words and actions when they happen.
- Giving artists the tools, when they join a program, to hold the organization accountable as active stakeholders.
- Acknowledging the land we use and the Native peoples who have lived and continue to live on it, on our website, in our programs and at the start of our residencies.
- Keeping our submission, programming and decision-making processes anti-racist, including free submissions and a diverse panel of readers.
- Recruiting, hiring and supporting staff in an anti-racist way, with transparent feedback across our team.
Land acknowledgement
The Orchard Project works in New York City, on Lenapehoking, the homeland of the Lenape people, and in Saratoga Springs, on the homelands of the Mohican, Kanien’kehá:ka (Mohawk) and Abenaki peoples. We honor the Indigenous peoples who have cared for these lands for generations and who continue to live and work here today, and we recognize that this land was taken from them. We are grateful to make work here, and we commit to building relationships with these communities through our programs.