The New Harmony Project, which has been faithfully serving writers for more than three decades, announces that Lori Wolter Hudson will succeed Mead Hunter as artistic director following the annual spring conference in June of 2018.
Lori Wolter Hudson will assume artistic leadership of the organization following fifteen years of dedicated involvement with The New Harmony Project in various capacities, including her current role as associate artistic director. She moves into her new position following a successful tenure in NYC as a director, adapter, and producer, most recently as the director / adapter of the off-Broadway hit Drunkle Vanya. As an assistant director, she has worked on numerous Broadway productions, including the Tony award-winning revival of Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of VirginiaWoolf?, in addition to productions at Roundabout Theatre Company, Manhattan Theatre Club, Atlantic Theater Company, American Conservatory Theater, Steppenwolf Theatre Company, South Coast Repertory, and Pittsburgh Public Theater. She previously served as artistic assistant of Signature Theatre Company in NYC.
Mead K. Hunter, who has successfully led the organization as artistic director for the past seven years, will step down following the 2018 conference as a newly tenured professor at the University of Portland. “Lori’s accession to artistic directorship,” Hunter says, “means that NHP now has two resident Hoosier leaders with the proximity and the vision to invest in the regional community as well the national. It heralds a bright new era for The Project.”
Jane Herndon, chair of the board of directors, says, "The board is thrilled to have Lori join The New Harmony Project as its next artistic director. We look forward to her inspirational vision as she leads us into the next phase of artistic excellence."
“I’m thrilled to be stepping up to artistically helm an organization I love, and believe in so much,” says Wolter Hudson of her appointment. “The New Harmony Project has enriched my life and career in ways I didn’t imagine possible when I first arrived to New Harmony over fifteen years ago. I have had the privilege of working under artistic directors including Anna Shapiro, Paul Walsh and Mead Hunter, long-time project director Joel Grynheim, and many of the founding board members, and have learned so much from their leadership, vision and guidance. There is truly no other organization I know of committed to serving writers and supporting positive, hope-filled stories that celebrate humanity and the resiliency of the human spirit. Especially today, I think The New Harmony Project mission is more vital and necessary than ever, and I am deeply committed to making the world a better place through the work we support, the writers we lift up, and the artists we inspire to make a difference.”
Lori Wolter Hudson is a director, producer, and administrator who has dedicated her professional career to new work development and creating exciting, daring theatre. She has developed plays and musicals by writers including Jessica Dickey, Andrea Stolowitz, Arlene Hutton, Crystal Skillman, Katie Bender, Susan Bernfield, Joel B. New, and Suzanne Bradbeer, among others. She is a co-founder of Three Day Hangover, a New York City-based theater company that reimagines classic stories for a contemporary audience, most famously responsible for the NY TimesCritic’s Pick Drunk Shakespeare, which has been running off-Broadway for almost four years. Her work has been featured in the New York Times, The Washington Post, The Huffington Post, Brooklyn Magazine and more.
She recently relocated from NYC to Indianapolis, IN, her home state, and in 2017 directed Stuart Little at Indiana Repertory Theatre. Lori holds a bachelor's degree from the University of Evansville and studied at the Moscow Art Theater. She was the inaugural recipient of the SDCF Charles Abbott Fellowship, is a member of Lincoln Center Theater Directors Lab and an associate member of SDC.
ABOUT THE NEW HARMONY PROJECT
In April of 1986, a group of theater, film, and television professionals gathered in Indianapolis to explore the trend in the entertainment arts toward exploitative and sensational material. They concluded there was a need to engage and support writers whose work sought a goal beyond mere entertainment, work that sought to empower and uplift. It was out of this meeting that The New Harmony Project was created. For 32 years, The Project has inspired a community of artists dedicated to this mission, motivated by a desire to support stories of hope, optimism, and the resiliency of the human spirit.
The New Harmony Project boasts an impressive roster of past participants including Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award-winning Robert Schenkkan(All the Way, The Kentucky Cycle), Theresa Rebeck (NBC’s Smash, Seminar), Lee Blessing (Tony and Pulitzer Prize nominee, A Walk in the Woods), Steven Dietz (Lonely Planet), Anna Ziegler (Photograph 51, Actually), John Pielmeier (The Exorcist, Agnes of God), James Still (Four Time Pulitzer Prize Nominee, The Velocity of Gary), Meredith Stiehm (Emmy Winner, Homeland, Cold Case), Danny Strong (Two Time Emmy Winner, Empire, Lee Daniels’ The Butler), Ngozi Anyanwu (The Homecoming Queen), Dan O’Brien (The Body of an American), George Brant(Grounded, Marie and Rosetta), Idris Goodwin (How We Got On, The Way The Mountain Moved), Regina Taylor (Drowning Crow, Crowns), Jim Leonard (Major Crimes, Dexter), Mark St. Germain (Freud’s Last Session, The Cosby Show), Angelo Pizzo (Rudy, Hoosiers), Matt Williams(Five Time Emmy Nominee, Home Improvement, Roseanne), David McFadzean (Three Time Emmy Nominee, Home Improvement, Roseanne), and numerous others.
The New Harmony Project is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization. For information on how to support this unique and worthwhile organization, please visit newharmonyproject.org, or follow us on social media.