Skip to: site menu | section menu | main content
History ...
Developing Artists Theater Company
Developing Artist Theater Company (DATCO) was founded in 1999 as a resident youth acting school and performing company by the proprietor of Center Stage, NY: Jill DeArmon. The goal of Developing Artists Theater Company (DATCO) was to create a supportive environment for a multi-disciplinary ensemble of actors, musicians, playwrights and composers between the ages 8-19.
Inspired by their first production, Runaways by Elizabeth Swados (performed in the summer of 1999), DATCO went on to establish its acting school and a membership free company, which premiered its first original work, Knee High to a Microphone in the summer of 2000. It was a musical about the discrimination its cast members faced in their daily lives. All subsequent productions have been member written and have personal statements about universal conditions, told through music, dance and humor. These writers and actors deal with issues that trouble themselves and consequently their audience, the youth of today: They focus on topics like drugs, alcohol, sexual orientation, multi-culturalism, anger management etc.
DATCO shared its residence at Center Stage, NY (voted one of the Best Off-Off Broadway theaters by TimeOutNY, 2002) with LAByrinth Theater Company (Artistic Directors: John Ortiz & Philip Seymour Hoffman). LAByrinth served as mentor to many DATCO students and many of its memebers continue to work as staff and teachers of DATCO.
DATCO’s season includes a summer musical and a winter new works festival. Past Developing Artists’ shows include: KNEE HIGH TO A MICROPHONE (2000), an original musical written by it’s cast about discrimination they encountered in their own lives; IN CASE YOU FORGET (2001), written by company member Ben Snyder, focusing on young graffiti writers in New York City’s Lower East Side (The play went on to be featured at Danny Hoch’s Second Annual NYC Hip Hop Theater Festival and NY Stage & Film); RAIL KING (2001) created around a series of improvisation exercises used in the first weeks of rehearsal and told the story of one young man’s journey to learn compassion and understanding through interactions with people he meets riding the subway from the Bronx to Coney Island. Megan Mostyn-Brown wrote the following two summer musicals. WE SAID OUT LOUD (2002) and THESE DAYS (2003), which was about the complex and diverse issues facing the lives of today’s high school students. In 2004, DATCO presented FREE DONUTS by David Solomon and in 2005, BILLY SLEEPYHEAD by Webb Wilcoxen. DATCO began New York's first youth theater festival in 2001: REBEL VERSES (2001-2006). The festival gives the company the opportunity to collaborate with many other youth theater organizations to showcase new young writers, actors and directors.