About The new group
Photo by Monique Carboni.
Our Mission & Values
The New Group, led by founding Artistic Director Scott Elliott and Executive Director Adam Bernstein, is an award-winning, artist-driven company with a commitment to developing and producing powerful, contemporary theater. While constantly evolving, we strive to maintain an ensemble approach to all our work and an articulated style of emotional immediacy in our acting and productions. In this way, we seek a theater that is adventurous, stimulating and most importantly "now", a true forum for the present culture.
Our Values
Pursue Excellence | Elevate Artists & Stories | Contemporary & Provocative | Bold Experimentation | Collaboration & Relationship Building
Our History
Now in our 30th year, The New Group is an award winning, artist-driven company with a commitment to developing and producing powerful, contemporary theater.
The New Group was founded in 1995 by acclaimed director and current Artistic Director Scott Elliott. Now in our 30th year, our company remains, at its core, an artist-founded and driven organization, where a community of creatives can experiment, take risks, and learn from each other away from the pressures of the commercial theater. Our approach has led to the production of more than 90 powerful, contemporary theater pieces featuring some of today’s most compelling performers.
Recent productions include All of Me by Laura Winters; The Seven Year Disappear by Jordan Seavey starring Cynthia Nixon and Taylor Trensch; Sabbath’s Theater by John Turturro and Ariel Levy; The Seagull/Woodstock, NY by Thomas Bradshaw with Parker Posey; and Black No More with a book by Academy Award-Winning writer John Ridley and music by Grammy Award-Winning artist Tariq Trotter (The Roots).
Other notable productions include Pulitzer Prize finalist Will Arbery’s Evanston Salt Cost Climbing; Sweet Charity starring Sutton Foster; Rasheeda Speaking directed by Cynthia Nixon and featuring Tonya Pinkins and Dianne Wiest; Sam Shepard’s Buried Child with Ed Harris and Amy Madigan; Jesse Eisenberg’s The Spoils; Thomas Bradshaw’s Intimacy and Burning; Kenneth Lonergan’s This is Our Youth and The Starry Messenger; Wallace Shawn’s Aunt Dan and Lemon, Marie and Bruce and Evening at the Talk House; Mike Leigh’s Abigail’s Party, Smelling a Rat and Ecstasy; David Rabe’s Hurlyburly; and the Tony Award-winning musical Avenue Q.
Our productions have gone onto Broadway and West End runs including The Spoils and Buried Child which played critically-acclaimed sold-out runs on the West End at Trafalgar Studios in London.
In our thirty years, we have received over 100 awards and nominations for excellence. The New Group is a recipient of the 2004 Tony Award for Best Musical (Avenue Q). The New Group and Scott Elliott were honored with a 2010-2011 Drama Desk Special Award “for presenting contemporary new voices, and for uncompromisingly raw and powerful productions.”
The organization’s New Group/New Works play and musical development program champions original works by emerging and established authors. The New Group Off Stage celebrates work at the intersection of art, multimedia and social engagement by showcasing some of today’s most compelling storytellers through web series, films, audio plays and more.
The New Group also operates a variety of tuition-free theater education programs from teen acting ensembles to college access programs, and a college-level conservatory acting program in collaboration with Long Island University Brooklyn.