Playwrights Horizons Theater School is a "professional training program for theater artists: actors, directors, playwrights, and dramaturgs" [1] affiliated with NYU's Tisch School of the Arts. It is located at 440 Lafayette Street in Manhattan.
The school was founded in the mid-1980s when NYU, in an effort to expand its program to also train directors, stage managers, and playwrights, approached then-head of Playwrights Horizons Andre Bishop to start a school that would fill those functions. An acting program was included in the school.
The school as a core acting training program with a variety of acting courses, voice & speech, movement, African dance, ballet, erofessionals works together to create an atmosphere of rigorous discipline and challenge for the adventurous student of theater. The training is largely Stanislavsky-based traditional theater training
In 18 years of operation the school, now under the direction of Helen R. Cook, has trained more than 1,800 theater students and produced approximately 600 faculty and student directed productions. The school, situated east of NYU’s main campus at 440 Lafayette Street, has a current enrollment of 200 students.
The school is the only one of the many studios in Tisch, aside from the Technical Production Track, that does not exclusively train actors. Students may train along many tracks, including acting, directing, design, and Creating Original Work (COW).
In 2008, the 4th Year actors putting up Directing pieces were able to use the Peter Jay Sharp Theatre, the Off-Broadway blackbox venue at Playwrights Horizons uptown, seating 120 people per showing.