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Sensing an opportunity to expand its services to artists and audience, NYTW undertook a capital campaign to purchase its current home at 79-83 East 4th Street in the East Village in 1991.

In October 1992, Leo Bassi's C. Colombo Inc. became NYTW's first production in 79 East 4th Street. Artists participating in workshop activities include Claudia Shear, Sybille Pearson, Robert Woodruff, Doug Wright and Anne Bogart. On the producing side NYTW re-committed itself to serve the needs of artists and audiences with more energy and definition of purpose. Major productions of the mid-1990's include Doug Wright's Quills, Claudia Shear's Blown Sideways Through Life, Tony Kushner's Slavs!, and The Secretaries by The Five Lesbian Brothers.

Jonathan Larson's Rent began performances at NYTW on January 26, 1996. Rent had been developed intensively during two years of workshop activities. The workshop side of NYTW is dedicated primarily to serving the needs of artists. Productions in workshop are intended to serve as a means for artists to "hear" what a new work sounds like in front of an invited audience. Rent's evolution from concept to readings, workshop, studio production and, finally, full production, is emblematic of NYTW's commitment to nurturing artists and projects in a truly individualized manner. In a tragic turn, Jonathan Larson died the night before the first NYTW performance. His legacy, Rent, played a record-breaking engagement at NYTW, moved to Broadway's Nederlander Theatre and won the 1996 Tony Award for Best Musical as well as the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. It is now the seventh longest running show in Broadway history.

Over the next ten years, the Workshop continued to hone and expand its programs to serve artists, inaugurating a number of new initiatives, including Minority Fellowships for writers and directors and becoming a "year-round" producing organization for challenging and unpredictable new theatre and fostering the creative work of artists. Productions during this period of growth include Tony Kushner's Homebody/Kabul, Kia Corthron's Light Raise the Roof, Caryl Churchill'sFar Away and A Number, Paul Rudnick's The Most Fabulous Story Ever Told, Amy Freed's The Beard of Avon, Will Power's FLOW and The Seven, Martha Clarke's Vienna: Lusthaus (revisited) and KAOS, and Oedipus at Palm Springsby The Five Lesbian Brothers. In recent years, Artistic Director Nicola enlarged the scope of activities to include international artists -- including playwrights, directors and designers - and to focus upon issues of non-traditional casting and the inclusion of diverse voices, representing all of the constituencies in NYTW's theatrical community.

In 2005, NYTW launched Learning Workshop, a multifaceted arts education program for high school students, and in 2006, a new series of Public Programs was inaugurated. Public Programs include panel discussion, Storyboard Cafés, Artist Dialogues, and online resources, as well as NYTW's long-standing AfterWords post-performance discussions.

NYTW continues to grow. In October 2005, NYTW was granted the vacant building at 72 East 4th Street, a former New York City storage facility, "as is," by New York City's Department Housing Preservation and Development as part of the creation of the Fourth Arts Block (FAB) Cultural District. That space is now used as a new scenery, costume and prop workshop.

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