Founded in the summer of 2003, the Milk Can Theatre Company is a collective of playwrights and directors.   The name of the company reflects our belief that there is power and elegance in simplicity.  Our work combines four of the basic building blocks of theatre (language, emotion, story, and audience) with a highly theatrical sensibility and the clean, clear results of an extensive developmental process.

We produce new plays and classics through our workshops, mainstage productions and annual ten-minute play festivals. Our plays find humor in the unexpected, excite the audience’s imagination and explore the complexity of the human experience, transforming everyday moments into theatrical journeys.

We provide a collaborative home for artists.  Each season allows every company member to take risks: the chance to explore, the opportunity to fail – it’s all a process.

We respond to plays that utilize heightened language. This commitment to language is based on our desire to emphasize that which separates theatre from TV and movies. Heightened language conveys emotion. Heightened language is the natural extension of the heightened acting that the theatre uses. That is to say, one must use theatrical language to get theatrical performances.

This type of language is not ordinary speech; it is language heightened, condensed, and distilled to its essence. A comma or an adjective really does make a difference. It exploits rhythm - of an individual scene, of the actors' voices and movements, of the play as a whole. It can be closer to a musical score than to fiction or a screenplay. It treads the line between prose and poetry, and would sound ridiculous coming out of an actor's mouth on a film or TV screen. The language that we're seeking is simple but elegant. It's intellectual and well thought out, yet quirky and filled with humanity. Stoppard goes on and on while Pinter barely speaks. Yet, both employ a highly theatrical use of language - language as poetry.

Do you ever wonder why we are so drawn to Shakespeare as opposed to other writers who were writing at the same time and in a similar style? We think the answer is related to Shakespeare's ability to capture emotions with his words. For us, theatre must be an emotional experience. As much as we can intellectually appreciate the art form, it is the humanity that ultimately appeals to us - as creators and audience members. The theatrical moments that we remember, that we can still taste, are moments of deep emotion - whether it was a character fighting to repress emotion or the angry tears of a character who can no longer hold back. It is the characters' emotional journey that allows us into their lives and invites us to ride along. That heightened emotion and passion, which as human beings we all have within us, can be expressed only through this medium, with a live audience participating in the emotional journey of the actors and the play itself.

Theatre must be about something. "Seinfeld" was the show about nothing -highly entertaining and often clever, but it didn't have the power to affect. We believe that the power of theatre is the power to transform the viewer - to truly change that person. The Milk Can Theatre Company strives to produce plays that have a strong point-of-view without being preachy.

We do make a distinction between plot and story. Plot is like pearls on a string - one pearl follows the next pearl until the strand is complete. Story is more like the effect of those pearls. "Seinfeld" always had a plot, but never a story. Ionesco, on the other hand, often has story, but very little plot.

We want to engage the audience. Every theatrical performance is an event. It's different every time - each audience creates a certain kind of chemistry with the actors. The awareness of being in a theatre with live actors creates a heightened atmosphere. It's immediate, there's a risk, it's happening NOW. The theatre assaults the audience's senses - the scent of a cigarette wafts over the audience; the smoke from a fog machine engulfs the first few rows and brings the atmosphere of the scene out into the audience; an actor enters from the back of the audience creating surround sound; a chandelier falls over the audience creating a ripple of fear.

We emphasize that which makes theatre distinct from television and movies. The work we develop and produce is work that can only exist between actors and audience. It is work that has to be told on stage.

We embrace theatrical conventions and the knowledge of being in a theatre. Our goal is to present work that seems true as opposed to real. For example, Matisse painted green skin in order to capture the truth of the way his subject appeared. That painting is what he saw as his subject stood in the leafy shade, and he communicates his truth/point-of-view to us.

The Milk Can Theatre Company takes innovative approaches and views on developing new work, and finds inventive ways to tackle older more established works and classics. Towards that end, we believe in an extensive developmental process. A play must have time to breathe. We believe in providing artists with the opportunity to work on their plays in a no-pressure (we provide money, space, and time) environment. Our seven-week "Scene Herd Uddered" workshop series is the perfect opportunity for artists to concentrate on process rather than product.

We include the idea of continuing to support the emerging artists who write and direct these projects as part of the extensive development process. The Milk Can Theatre Company provides an artistic home for our members, which gives them a creative environment in which they can have the freedom to experiment, to try new and/or unfamiliar genres and forms, and to work on plays that do not have the appearance of being "commercial."

The company is a home - a place to which we feel free to bring new ideas, where we can work through problem sections of pieces, and which offers the resources to allow each of us to grow as artists.

Everyone is involved and entrenched in every aspect of production: house managing, collecting donations, set building, design, etc.  This kind of commitment creates a stronger team and also allows us to learn from each other.  Every single member of Milk Can has learned a new skill set over the past few seasons, whether it's how to use a screw gun, how to stage manage, or how to write lyrics. 

Throughout the year, we present work at all levels of production: readings, developmental workshops, and fully staged projects. Because we seek to reach the largest possible audience, we put few limits on the work we produce or the artists we hire.   Rather, we respond to current events, pop culture, and our own lives.

For our mainstage productions, we usually pair the world premiere of a new play with a classic that seems to illuminate the new work.

The SHU process is a seven-week workshop culminating in an intricately staged reading. The process is divided into three parts:

PHASE ONE: In the first four weeks, a team -- usually composed of a playwright, a director and a group of actors -- goes into rehearsal and development. At the end of this period, there is an in-house run-through of the project.   Extensive feedback is given to the creative team. The focus is on script development.

PHASE TWO: The playwright/director team is given a "quiet week" -- one week to write, re-write, and consider how to deal with feedback before going back into rehearsal.

PHASE THREE: Over the next two weeks, groups rehearse and continue to polish and refine the play. The focus is on performance, though the process of script development continues.

After the performance, there is always a talk-back to get audience feedback.

This is a rare opportunity for emerging artists to spend seven weeks developing a project together, without the intense pressures and constraints usually associated with the production of a new play.   We gladly push teams to take huge creative risks and stretch the boundaries, rather than driving towards a neat, traditional end product.  

Goals of the SHU Process:

• To help scripts which are past the sit-down-reading phase.
• To help Milk Can evaluate possible projects for mainstage production.
• To experiment with director/playwright/actor relationships before a larger commitment is made.
• To develop new work and new ideas about classic texts.
• To allow a writer a prolonged period of time in which to rewrite.

Our ten-minute plays are original plays written each season around a given theme. Past projects include:

• The Receipt Plays: Each play was based on a randomly chosen shopping receipt.
• The Matisse Plays: Each play was based on a randomly chosen painting by French Impressionist Henri Matisse.
• The Hamlet Plays: Each play was based on a character from Hamlet.
• The Potluck Plays: Each play was based on a randomly assigned recipe.
• The Five Borough Plays: Each play was based on a randomly assigned NYC borough.
• The Science Plays: Each play was based on an era of scientific discovery.
• The Disorder Plays: Each play was based on a psychological disorder.

260 West 52nd St. #17C
New York, NY 10019