Lincoln Center Theater has given new writing a home of its own: the Helen Gurley Brown Theater Lab, funded by a $4.25M gift from The Helen Gurley Brown Foundation over five years. Its first six writers include two Pulitzer winners, James Ijames and Martyna Majok.
The gift, effective immediately, also attaches the foundation's name to two jobs. Maria Manuela Goyanes, who curates the LCT3 seasons at the Claire Tow Theater, now holds the title Helen Gurley Brown LCT3 Artistic Director and Producer. Alongside her, newly appointed, is Kalina Ko, as Helen Gurley Brown Theater Lab Manager and Associate Producer.
The Lab is meant for writers building new work for the American stage, and it gives its fellows three things: room to work, money, and help in planning how a piece gets from the page to a production. Goyanes set the bar high: “The Theater Lab is designed to incubate the next canon of new American theater for the stage of Lincoln Center and beyond.”
The opening cohort mixes established playwrights with writers coming from music. Ijames won the Pulitzer for Fat Ham, which was also a Tony nominee for Best Play. Majok won hers for Cost of Living, her Broadway debut, and is now adapting Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 for Broadway. Ro Reddick’s Cold War Choir Practice took this year’s Susan Smith Blackburn Prize after an Off-Broadway run co-produced by MCC, Clubbed Thumb and Page 73. Avery Deutsch, a recent playwriting MFA from UT Austin, won the 2025 Neukom Playwriting Award for The Age of Mary.
The songwriting team of Abigail Barlow and Emily Bear completes the six. The pair won a Grammy for The Unofficial Bridgerton Musical Album and wrote the songs for Disney’s Moana 2, and Barlow made her Broadway debut this year as Katherine Howard in SIX.
Eve Burton, president of the foundation, tied the gift back to its namesake: “Helen loved the theater, and partnering with Lincoln Center Theater is the exact type of endeavor she would have relished.” The foundation already supports artistic directors nationwide through its BOLD Theater Women’s Leadership Circle, founded in 2017, and Goyanes credited that network with her own path to LCT, calling the Lab “a bold swing for LCT.”
Lear deBessonet, LCT’s Kewsong Lee Artistic Director, made the case for time over space: “Artists need more than a place to put a play on its feet. They need the time and support to explore new ideas and take creative risks.”
Ko comes from Atlantic Theater Company, where as Director of New Play Development she ran the Judith Champion Launch Commissions and co-produced the Judith Champion MixFest Reading Series. She has co-coordinated the Ma-Yi Writer’s Lab since 2022, and earlier worked at Roundabout Theatre Company and Manhattan Theatre Club.
The Lab runs alongside the LCT3 season already announced for the Claire Tow. Mfoniso Udofia’s world premiere creation stories and all the important importants, directed by Tamilla Woodard, is playing now (see our first look). Emma Watkins’s Pretend It’s Pretend, directed by Annie Tippe, is also on the slate, and The Comedy Series returns in spring 2027 with artists yet to be announced.
