WSJ: Salutes to the Creative Class
In the Midtown offices of the Lark Play Development Center on Tuesday, the playwright Sandi Goff Farkas was awarded the first ever Lark Risktaker Award for her creation of the Playwrights of New York (Pony) Fellowship. Pony supports emerging playwrights with a monthly stipend and the use of an apartment for a year.
Katori Hall, a Pony recipient whose play “The Mountaintop” started at the Lark in 2007 and opens on Broadway on Thursday, was on hand to give Ms. Goff Farkas her award. She neighed at the presentation of a glass pony and described the benefactor as “the most gorgeous woman with legs as tall as skyscrapers. I was like, ‘What is this woman doing helping the Lark?'”
Ms. Goff Farkas, who writes plays and screenplays “about business people and their family dynamics,” said she created Pony because she saw the pull of Hollywood over New York for young writers. “I witnessed a lot of great plays not get written,” she said. She asked her husband, Andrew Farkas, the CEO of Island Capital Group, to buy an apartment, “and he did,” and asked 12 friends for $2,500 each “to support a playwright for a month.” She thanked everyone “who ponied up here” for the evening and “my own patron,” i.e. Andrew Farkas, “who puts me in a nice apartment. I get a stipend and he gives me support in every category.”
Read the full article on The Wall Street Journal.