A $20,000 commission to support the creation and development of new musical theatre projects by BIPOC artists and women artists.

In addition to $20,000 (to be shared if awarded to a creative team), each project will receive creative and developmental support over an 18-month period, including two developmental workshops of at least 50 hours.

THEATER LATTÉ DA CONTINUES NEW WORK DEVELOPMENT AND AWARDS $20,000 NEXT GENERATION COMMISSION TO SUPPORT NEW MUSICAL THEATER BY WOMEN ARTISTS AND ARTISTS OF COLOR

Theater Latté Da today announces Jay Adana as the recipient of the 2024 NEXT Generation Commission, an opportunity for women artists and artists of color designed to support the creation and development of new musical theater projects. Theater Latté Da received over 100 applicants for this year’s commission. The selection committee for the NEXT Generation Commission was Pirronne Yousefzadeh, director/writer and Associate Artistic Director of The Playwrights' Center; Harrison David Rivers, playwright; Justin Lucero, Theater Latté Da Artistic Director; and Elissa Adams, Theater Latté Da Associate Artistic Director/Director of New Work.

The primary creative artist or team will receive a $20,000 commission. The project will receive creative and developmental support over an 18-month period, including fifty hours of developmental workshop  support. The 2024 award is the third cycle of the NEXT Generation Commission. "I'm so proud to continue Theater Latté Da's commitment, ambition, and track record of championing new musicals, and specifically our championing of the ultra-talented Jay Adana. I believe so much in Jay's unique voice, distinctive humor, and genre-pushing innovation, and I believe these exciting qualities are exactly what the American musical needs more of." Previously supported projects include La Llorona: A Zarzuela of La Frontera: A Border Story In Music, with songs and lyrics by Celeste Moreno, musical arrangements by Bethany Brinton and direction and dramaturgy by Crystal Manich, and an adaptation of Willa Cather’s novel My Ántonia, music and lyrics by The Kilbanes, book by Noah Brody, directed by Jessie Austrian. In addition to the NEXT Generation Commission, Theater Latté Da’s NEXT Up new work development program is currently supporting the creation of new musicals by creative teams including Naomi Iizuka and Paul Hodge, David Simpatico, Michael Holland and Darrah Cloud and Paolo Tiról and Noam Shapiro among others.

NEXT 25X25 is Theater Latte Da’s ambitious commitment to cultivate 25 new musicals, or plays with music, by 2025. Under the leadership of Elissa Adams, Associate Artistic Director and Director of New Work, this initiative is rooted in the belief that it is the responsibility of the regional theater not only to speak to audiences today, but to contribute to the dramatic canon of tomorrow. Through NEXT 25X25, Theater Latté Da is investing deeply in the future of the American musical theater through world premiere productions, our annual NEXT Festival, NEXT UP development program, and the NEXT Generation Commission. Since our founding in 1998, Theater Latté Da has always found ways to bring artists together to create new work, resulting in sixteen world premieres, including some of our most memorable and celebrated productions. World premieres include: Twelve Angry Men: A New Musical, All Is Calm: The Christmas Truce of 1914, We Shall Someday, Christmas at the Local, A Christmas Carole Petersen, Five Points, C., To Let Go and Fall, Knock!, Bankrupt City Ballad, Underneath the Lintel, Lullaby, Steerage Song, New York Musical Shorts, Passage of Dreams, and Oh $#!% I’m Turning Into My Mother, as well as the upcoming Johnny Skeeky; or, The Remedy for Everything. Learn more at www.latteda.org/next-25x25.

The NEXT Generation Commissioned-Artist

Jay Adana is a 2nd generation Korean blues/pop singer-songwriter with very few, but very passionate enemies. Her work has been seen at New World Stages, The Public Theater, Playwrights Horizons, The Eugene O’Neill Theater Center, 59E59, Berkeley Rep, La Jolla Playhouse, Ars Nova, and featured by PBS, The American Theater Wing, Joe’s Pub, and The Dramatist Magazine. She is a recipient of the Richard Rodgers Award, the Vivace Award, the Jonathan Larson Award, and was a Dramatist Guild Foundation Fellow. Currently under commission by Theater Latté Da and The Oregon Shakespeare Festival. She has deeply enjoyed residencies at the Public Theater #BARS program, Rhinebeck Writers Retreat, SPACE on Ryder Farm, and The Grove at Goodspeed. Education: #BARS workshop founded by Rafael Casal and Daveed Diggs, Acting BFA SUNY Purchase Conservatory. www.jayadana.com. This year’s commission will support Adana’s project, The Jordan and Avery Show.

About The Jordan and Avery Show:

Book, Music & Lyrics by Jay Adana

Jordan and Avery are a pair of broke-ass not-quite-30-somethings who make comedy songs on YouTube, and today they found out they’re being evicted. When the video they make about it goes viral, they do a pretty shitty job navigating success, grief, and all the things they haven’t been talking about. Developed at The Eugene O’Neill Theater Center’s 2022 National Musical Theater Conference directed by Jess McLeod.

NOTE: Theater Latté Da will have right of first refusal for the World Premiere of the commissioned work. Partnerships with other producing theaters and/or independent producers will be welcomed.  Creative teams will have the right to apply for and participate in other developmental workshops and residencies during the course of development at Latté Da.