Lisa McNulty is the Producing Artistic Director of WP Theater, a position she has held since 2014. Founded in 1978 as the Women’s Project Theater, the WP has been a leader in developing, producing, and promoting new work by Women+ at every stage of their careers. The WP has produced more than six hundred main-stage productions and developmental projects.
An award-winning Broadway, Off-Broadway, and regional producer, McNulty took over the role at WP Theater after eight seasons at Manhattan Theater Club. Previously, Lisa served as Literary Manager and Associate Artistic Director at the WP Theater.
While at MTC, McNulty made her debut as an artistic line producer on Broadway with the 2010 production of Lee Hall’s The Pitman Painters at the Samuel L. Friedman Theater, where she also produced Terrence McNally’s Master Class, John Patrick Shanley’s Outside Mullingar, and Harvey Fierstein’s Casa Valentina. In MTC’s Off-Broadway space, she worked with notable artists like Lynn Nottage on the Pulitzer Prize-winning Ruined, Tarell Alvin McCraney on the acclaimed Choir Boy, and Lynne Redgrave’s final project, Nightingale.
As WP’s leader, McNulty has now transformed the institution—securing a theatrical home for WP on the Upper West Side and programming nine seasons of critically acclaimed new work. During McNulty’s tenure, WP won the Lortel, Drama Desk, and OBIE Awards for artistic excellence. In addition, one of the most exciting features of WP is the two-year “lab” or workshop for up-and-coming playwrights, directors, and producers, whose work results in the biennial Pipeline Festival, which has become one of the city’s most popular programs for emerging Women+ artists. The festival features new works in various stages of development, ranging from staged readings to streamed films.
We recently met with Lisa McNulty to learn more about this incredible woman.
How do you balance the mission of the WP Theater with your plans and ideas for the organization?
I’m the luckiest Artistic Director in that my artistic priorities align with WP’s mission to uplift Women+ artists for the stage. WP’s founder, Julia Miles, gave me my first paying job in the theater back in 1997, and so WP and its mission have been formative in my understanding of what theater is and what it should do. I returned to WP in 2014 to lead the organization because I was craving that exact clarity of purpose.
Who has inspired you the most during your years in WP Theater?
A great example is Martyna Majok, who was in the Lab in my first season. We premiered her play Ironbound; her New York debut and I helped her develop her play Queens, which went on to be produced at Lincoln Center.
Martyna got her start at WP and then went on to be produced on Broadway to win the Pulitzer Prize. She is currently working on a Broadway-bound musical with Florence Welch.
As you engage the next generation of Women+, what would you consider the three “must-see shows” that epitomize the message or mission of the WP community?
Of course, I’m biased; I love all our work! I’d encourage folks to check out our Pipeline Festival this spring. Audiences for our past festivals have caught new work by fantastic, early-career artists before their Pulitzers, Broadway outings, and Tony and Emmy Awards started rolling in. The Pipeline Festival is your opportunity to see work before it’s snapped up by the biggest stages/screens in the country and to be smug with your friends later and say, “I saw her before she was big.” It’s a wild time—but you can’t beat the creative energy.
What makes the Pipeline Festival so unique?
The Pipeline festival is unique because the Lab is unique. There isn’t another program in the country fostering early-career writers, directors, and producers in an intensive program designed to build cohorts of artists that will become each other’s primary collaborators The program is a residency where the artists spend their time connecting and collaborating to prepare for the Pipeline Festival, the culminating program where we present five projects written, directed, and produced by the Lab Cohort. It all happens in five weeks and is glorious chaos!
We’re here to make sure that Women+ artists have a place to share their stories in all their glorious complexity and for those artists to jump off the WP trampoline into the stratosphere. Women+ artists create our work, and it is as big, bold, funny, theatrical, and world-class as any theater in town!
For more information on WP Theater, visit wptheater.com