The CRY HAVOC Company, Inc. is a not-for-profit theater company in New York City. Led by Artistic Director Kitt Lavoie, CRY HAVOC is committed to developing new plays and reinvestigating existing plays in an environment that demands that artists challenge the boundaries of their talent and technique. CRY HAVOC is committed to creating raw, provocative, and humane theater by approaching all plays – both comedy and drama – as conflicts between individuals struggling to do what each desperately believes is right. CRY HAVOC is committed to bringing the best of this work to the public as a powerful and sustained voice on the Off-Broadway stage.
The CRY HAVOC community began working together in 1997, and was formally incorporated as a 501(c)3 not-for-profit organization in 2008 in honor of its tenth year of work. Since its founding, CRY HAVOC has developed more than seventy new plays and scores of new approaches to existing plays through its active Workshop and Lab programs. In that time, CRY HAVOC has also brought more than 25 of these projects to the New York stage, including its critically acclaimed production of
Romeo & Juliet (featuring two women in the title roles) and the world premieres of more than a dozen new plays. Projects developed with CRY HAVOC have also appeared in more than 35 productions at other major Off-Broadway, New York, and regional venues.
The CRY HAVOC artistic community is comprised of more than 150 actors, writers, directors, designers, composers, and production staff, and is the home of The CRY HAVOC Resident Company.
The CRY HAVOC Company is proud to announce the opening of its new rehearsal and performance space at 347 West 36th Street. After nearly fourteen years of developing raw, provocative, and humane theater, CRY HAVOC’s two hundred actors, writers, and directors now have a 24-hour, seven-day-a-week home to create and present challenging new work.
Our new workspace will allow us to expand our educational and literary programs exponentially, serve many more artists, and do even more rigorous work on plays under development with the company. And it will allow us to share our work much more frequently with our audience.
CRY HAVOC is committed to bringing our audience inside the development process to see and interact with our writers, actors, and directors at phases of work that normally happen behind closed doors.
With the opening of our new space, our open workshops, interactive rehearsals, and discussions of new plays will occur much more frequently, beginning with a slate of events that will allow the public to encounter some of the work that we are already doing in our new home:
The “How We Got Here” Open Workshop Series – featuring discussions of plays that have played a pivotal role in the history of CRY HAVOC and discussion with the artists behind them.
Monday, October 25 at 7:00pm
Makes Three – discussion of the full-length play through which CRY HAVOC’s new play development approach was honed.
Thursday, November 4 at 7:00pm
CRY HAVOC and Shakespeare – discussion of CRY HAVOC’s approach to Shakespeare featuring selections from Romeo & Juliet, Macbeth, Much Ado About Nothing, and other plays that figured significantly into CRY HAVOC’s history.
Friday, November 12 at 7:00pm
The Median Line and realer than that – discussion of two plays by the same writer, addressing similar themes, written fifteen years apart – one the first play that CRY HAVOC ever produced, the second a play from the Workshop that was recently published.
The Moving In Plays – The first three weekends in December, we will share plays written by ten CRY HAVOC writers specifically to celebrate the opening of our new home – each inspired by photos of an empty room… and the two characters who are moving in.
If you would like to join us for any of these Open Workshops, please RSVP at
rsvp@cryhavoccompany.org.
