Mission Statement

Handcart Ensemble is a New York City theater company devoted to bringing new life to literary masterworks by combining bold, inventive staging with language-rich translations, adaptations, and classically inspired new works.

Since its founding in 1999, the company has been ambitious in its choice and creation of material. The ensemble selected Andromaque, a seventeenth century French tragedy, for its debut production, and staged it in an original, rhyming verse translation that brought new flair to its crisp, suspenseful plot. The next production used carefully choreographed, evocative stage movement and a minimum of costumes and set pieces to re-imagine an entire nineteenth century novel, Balzac’s The Wild Ass’s Skin.

Handcart has continued in this adventurous spirit, translating foreign-language plays and theatricalizing non-dramatic sources over a period of six years and eight productions. In building upon the ages’ finest and most enduring literary accomplishments, the group seeks to edify, inspire, and entertain its audiences.

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