Alumnus Matt Barbot '17 Named 2019-2020 New York Theatre Workshop Fellow

By
Zoe Contros Kearl
August 06, 2019

Playwriting alumnus Matt Barbot '17 was recently named a New York Theatre Workshop 2019-2020 2050 Artistic Fellow. The 2050 Fellowship is named in celebration of the U.S. Census Bureau’s projection that by the year 2050, there will be no single racial or ethnic majority in the United States. This projection provokes thoughts at New York Theatre Workshop about the transformations that will take place in the American landscape–technologically, environmentally, demographically and artistically. They are a catalyst for broader questions about our moral and artistic future.

Fittingly, Barbot’s artistic statement reads, “My plays are stories about stories. I’m intrigued by the ways we curate our identities, and the stories we choose to wear are a major facet of this. This has become very clear in the face of political upheaval from people wholeheartedly invested in a story of America where they’re the only heroes and their backs are against the wall, in a story of where a darkly imagined past can be made real. I want to continue to investigate how we tell ourselves who we are.”

Barbot is a writer from Brooklyn, NY. His play El Coquí Espectácular and the Bottle of Doom received its world premiere at Two River Theater in January of 2018. His play Infallibility was produced as part of the 2013 New York International Fringe Festival, where it was named one of Indie Theater Now’s Best of FringeNYC 2013. Princess Clara of Loisaida was a finalist for the Latinx Theatre Commons' 2018 Carnaval of New Latinx Work, as well as for the 2018 Columbia@Roundabout New Play Series. Saints Go Marching was a semifinalist for the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center's National Playwrights Conference. Recently, his short play A List of Some Shit I've Killed was published as part of the Red Bull Theater's anthology Red Bull Shorts Volume III. Barbot received his MFA from Columbia University.