30th Anniversary Conference - New York City

Please join us in New York City from June 25-27^th, 2015, for the 30^th anniversary conference. We’ll be at Columbia University, which is located on Broadway and 116^th Street.

Our conference hotel is the Marrakech Hotel, and they are holding a block of rooms under LMDA. It’s less than a ten-minute walk from the conference site. Rooms are running about $200 a night, including those with two beds. There is a flight of stairs leading to the lobby.

A slightly cheaper option is the Broadway Hotel and Hostel, two blocks south of the Marrakech. Traditional hotel rooms are closer to $150. They have dorm-style rooms for $58 per night with shared bathroom.

For a wheelchair-accessible hotel, we recommend Hotel Newton which is a stone's throw from the 96th St Station and eight blocks south of the Marrakech Hotel.

This year’s conference will be a very special time to look back and hear from founding members and past presidents, including Alexis Greene, David Copelin and Tim Sanford. We’ll be looking to the future in a number of ways, including an ECD’s Take Over! event where the best and brightest of the next generation tell us what is on their minds. You’ll also have the opportunity to meet the 2015 Alliance Theatre/Kendeda National Playwriting Competition finalists as they present excerpts of their work followed by a coffee hour for you to get to know them.

And it wouldn’t be a conference in New York if we didn’t take advantage of some of its best and brightest. Anne Cattaneo will be talking with our In Conversation participants, critics Peter Marks of the Washington Post and Linda Winer of Newsday. Vicki Stroich will be hosting a panel on design and dramaturgy that includes playwright Lisa D’Amour and designers Fitz Patton and Louisa Thompson (who generated her own theater piece this season, “Washeteria”).

The UCaucus will be back; you’ll hear from the Bly Grant recipients, we’re going to talk about moving dramaturgy off the stage and out through the theater, and we’ll continue the Boston conversation about what to do when someone in the room starts changing the text. We’re going to hear from some amazing companies creating and producing work from an incredibly inclusive perspective (including The New Black Fest, Women’s Project and The Apothetae). Since it’s Pride Week, we’ll be talking about plays tackling current issues of gender identity and sexuality. And, of course, there’s plenty of night life in NYC, which we’ll tell you all about. We’ve left Thursday and Friday evenings open so you can dine with friends and partake of the artistic delights of your choice.

Because it’s Pride weekend and many of those events happen on Sunday, we’ve chosen to formally end the conference on Saturday night with the banquet. But we’re going to have a tour of the “Storylines” exhibit at the Guggenheim with docents to talk about the art work on Sunday morning at 10:15 for any of you who would like to join me for that event.

And lastly, we know this is an expensive city, so I’m pleased to say we are doing everything in our power to cut down on your coffee budget. We’ll also be providing the Regional Lunch this year.

If you are looking at flights, the kick-off time is Thursday at noon.

We look forward to sharing the complete conference handbook with you shortly. Please come join us in NYC and celebrate everything LMDA has been and what it hopes to be for the next thirty years and beyond.

Beth Blickers, LMDA President and Conference Chair
Corianna Moffatt, Conference Coordinator