Anya Martin has announced the end of the 15-year-old Hiawatha Project, as the company’s founder exits to pursue her burgeoning playwriting career beyond Pittsburgh.
Martin is the founding artistic director, lead writer, director and producer of the company, whose mission was “to create original performances exploring specific social questions through myth, free association, and movement.”
The farewell message on the website states:
“It is with a spirit of profound gratitude, that we announce Hiawatha Project’s closing after 15 years of all new, and original world premiere theatre-making. We are deeply proud of the work that Hiawatha put out into the world, and the artists, people and communities with whom we created, dreamed and built alongside. We worked with great intention, integrity and whole-heartedness, and with a deep love for what theatre could be and do in Pittsburgh.”
Hiawatha Project was founded in 2010 “with a heart for social justice and a professional aesthetic for nontraditional and experimental theatrical work. A statement on the company’s closing noted that it had “developed and produced five premieres through Hiawatha’s “8-phase creation cycle,” which began with conceptional research and community outreach through ensemble creation techniques and workshops presentations to fully produced professional productions.”
“I built Hiawatha and Hiawatha built me, as an artist, and as a person,” Martin said in an email announcement. “I wrote, directed and co-produced the company’s first show Camino, while pregnant with my first child, and I wrote, directed, and co-produced JH: Mechanics of a Legend while the second child was strapped to me in a carrier. I am deeply proud of the work that Hiawatha put out into the world, and the artists, people and communities with whom we created, dreamed and built alongside. We worked with great intention, integrity and whole-heartedness, and with a deep love for what theatre could be and do in Pittsburgh.”
Martin was a recent 2024 O’Neill Semi-Finalist and Madison New Play Winner for her play, The President’s Pants (and Buchanan’s Peace). Her play, Bloom, was a 2023 second-rounder in the Austin Film Festival, and her award-winning play Helen at the Gym was presented at the Lucille Lortel in NYC with the Red Bull Theater and is published with Stage Rights. Last year, her work Like a Dog was published by Fresh Words and International Literary Magazine.
Learn more about Martin’s works at AnyaMartinPlays.com.
the challenges of pandemic parenting. It features a book by Martin
and original music and lyrics by Monica Stephenson.
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