Please donate to support The Hearth and the important work that we do in supporting emerging artists of underrepresented genders.

Our Mission

Founded in 2016, The Hearth exists to address a dual need in the theater community:

To narrow the industry-wide gender gap by welcoming more women, trans, and non-binary artists and artists of underrepresented genders into the field
To launch the careers of emerging artists by offering them otherwise rare opportunities for institutional support, development, and production of new works

The Hearth is a premiere theater organization in New York that dedicates itself in equal measure to these two important but often overlooked objectives—and no other similarly-sized theater organization has our track record of producing work at such a high caliber and kickstarting the professional trajectories of talented artists like Gracie Gardner, Kathy Ng, Bailey Williams, Nia Akilah Robinson and Kallan Dana (to name a few).

Our Motivation

In 2015, the League of Professional Theatre Women conducted a study of New York theaters and their employment of female theater-makers over a five-year span. They found that less than half of the jobs on a given production are held by women. 2012-2013 saw the highest amount of plays by female writers - 36%. That same year, only 8% of lighting designers were women. When theaters did hire women, they often hired the same several people over and over again.*

We're sick of these statistics. So we've set out to do something about them.

Our Work

The Hearth nurtures and celebrates women, trans, non-binary artists and artists of underrepresented genders.

We commission, develop, and produce plays that explore characters who pulse with emotional, intellectual, and psychological complexity and, by so doing, we challenge gendered stereotypes, advance and complicate the conversation about feminism, and expand perceptions of what it means to be live in a body that has been historically oppressed or marginalized due to gender expression.

The Hearth focuses on elevating diverse and representative view points from a range of bodies, backgrounds, and experiences. Our production teams are made up of made up of women, trans, non-binary, and gender non-conforming artists — the very populations whose stories we tell and whose voices we elevate. Read more at thehearththeater.com.

Ongoing Support for The Hearth