Fortress Productions

Formed in 2017 in response to the erosion of New York City’s once critically vibrant Off-Off-Broadway/indie theater scene, Corkscrew Theater Festival’s mission is to reduce the steep financial and material barriers for early-career artists striving to produce work unreliant on traditional nonprofit and commercial models. Merging the institutional support of a theater company, the soul of a collective, and the energy of a festival, Corkscrew prioritizes new and underrepresented voices creating spectacularly eclectic, defiantly exhilarating, subversively jubilant theater.

Corkscrew selects each season through a free and open submissions process, culminating in a five-week repertory festival of five world premiere productions and five works-in-progress. We pay commissioning fees for mainstage shows, assist with physical production costs, and provide comprehensive dramaturgical, casting, and design support over our months-long developmental process. Corkscrew’s commitment to providing fiscal and creative resources supplants the usual limitations of festival settings, facilitating meaningful collaboration among a multiplicity of theatrical perspectives and offering audiences a unique mix of work across disciplines and development stages by artists they may not know—yet!