Mission Statement
The Land Whale Murders by Jonathan A. Goldberg. Rich Hollman, Nathaniel Kent, Jennifer Joan Thompson, Carl Graham Howell, Amy Landon and Robert Michael McClure. Photo by Eric Michael Pearson
Founded in December 2008, Shelby Company is a New York-based, not-for-profit, playwright-centric theatre company. Dedicated to producing original works for the stage, we strive to push the conventions and boundaries of theatre to new limits by providing each playwright with everything needed to see a project come to fruition, from developmental readings to fully staged productions. We tell stories using history, folk and Americana to help keep the tradition of theatre alive, necessary and relevant.
Our Story
Fallsway by Dan Moyer. Jenni Putney and Nathaniel Kent. Photo by Craig VanDerSchaegen.
Shelby Company was founded by a group of theatre artists who stem originally from the Bay Area, CA. Artistic Director Dan Moyer attended Henry M. Gunn High School in Palo Alto with co-founders Will Brill, Grayson DeJesus and Jenni Putney. He then went to New York University with Executive Director Nathaniel Kent (who also happens to be from the Bay Area), Literary Manager Jonathan A. Goldberg, and co-founder Brian Hedden.
Font of Knowledge by Jonathan A. Goldberg. Dan Moyer, James B. Kennedy and Lauren Glover. Photo by Tony Webster.
After graduating in 2008 from NYU, Moyer and Kent began submitting two plays - Moyer's New Beulah and WINNEMUCCA (three days in the belly) - to various festivals around the country under the name Shelby Company (so named for Gunn High School drama teacher Jim Shelby). Meanwhile, Goldberg had submitted a third play, My Father Is A Tetris Game, to a festival in NYC and asked the newly formed Shelby Company to lend its name and resources to the project.
Sousepaw: A Baseball Story by Jonathan A. Goldberg. James B. Kennedy and Christina Pumariega.
The success of these three productions sparked in the original members a passion for the continuance of pushing theatrical limits through original scripts and a dedication to the importance of national production. Since inception, Shelby Company has worked with hundreds of artists on a dozen original full-length plays and an ongoing comedy show that has amassed about 100 short comedic plays and monologues. They have performed these projects in 9 U.S. states and Canada to thousands of satisfied audience members.
