From 1987 through the present, Potomac Theatre Project has been an Off-Broadway and DC powerhouse of veteran and emerging talent, creating socially and politically acute theatre for the 20th and 21st centuries.
The company was founded in 1987 by Co-Artistic Directors Cheryl Faraone, Richard Romagnoli, and Jim Petosa—three theatre makers determined to establish a dynamic and provocative company that would also provide a bridge to professional theatre for aspiring young artists. That same year, Faraone and Romagnoli joined the faculty at Middlebury College, where the company’s work was immediately embraced and supported. As Potomac Theatre Project in DC and Maryland, the company has produced 75 main stage productions along with numerous new play readings and late night experimental productions.
In 2007, Potomac Theatre Project relocated to New York and became informally known as PTP/NYC, producing at Atlantic Stage 2 in Chelsea through 2022 (with, perforce, online seasons in 2020 and 2021). The New York seasons have seen some 39 full productions, along with 25 late night readings, movement pieces, devised theatre, and the like. Comprised of New York professionals along with Middlebury College students and recent grads, PTP/NYC convened every summer through 2022 on Middlebury’s campus to begin its rehearsal process before moving to New York for the five-week season.
In its 3 1/2 decades, the voices of PTP’s writers have addressed the necessity and difficulty of art, homelessness, censorship, pornography, AIDS, totalitarianism, apartheid and gender wars—always in passionate, deeply human terms. Playwrights whose work has repeatedly been seen on the company’s stages include Howard Barker, Caryl Churchill, Harold Pinter, Neal Bell, Robert Chesley, Athol Fugard, Vaclav Havel, Bertolt Brecht, Robert Patrick and many others. PTP offered an annual five-week repertory season encompassing 2-3 full productions, late-night showings, readings and a variety of complementary events.
This collaboration between the company and Middlebury remains
the only such link between a liberal arts college and a professional
theatre in the country.
In 2023, the company’s relationship with Middlebury College was dissolved. PTP is now moving into the decade’s new theatrical landscape – future emerging!