Our History
The primary cause of our group is to make theater live, to as Marsha Norman once wrote, “provide a keyhole into some world that nobody has ever seen.” We want to produce what Hilton Als called “…a refraction of reality, containing feelings and thoughts that are put forth, first, in a primary text, which the actor interprets—an interpretation that the director supports or edits, in an attempt to help build, in a made-up world, an atmosphere of verisimilitude.”
And we think people should laugh while we do that heeding the aphorism attributed to George Bernard Shaw that “If you want to tell people the truth, you’d better make them laugh …”
In January 2018, Joe Queenan and T.J. Elliott started writing their attempts at truth telling via ‘problem comedies’. These plays explore difficult issues in a humanistic and entertaining fashion seeking through their collaboration with actors, director, other theater professionals, and the audience to provoke discussion and understanding of issues and ideas critical to our time such as race, religion, and ideological polarization.
In order to reach audiences as directly and immediately as possible, T.J. and Executive Producer Marjorie Phillips Elliott founded and incorporated Knowledge Workings Theater. Our first Off-Broadway Equity showcase, Alms, enjoyed a sold-out run in May 2019 at TheaterLab in NYC. In that production and with all of our subsequent productions, our main aim is to not only stage our ‘problem comedies’ but also give members of our team — actors and our tech wizards — opportunities to show their work to a wider audience.
Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, like other NYC companies we had to stage our next two plays — Grudges and Keeping Right — via Zoom. Nonetheless, we managed to ‘make theater live‘ and successful even on that less-than-ideal venue. In November 2021, we returned to an actual stage through our co-production with Broom Street Theater of Madison Wisconsin of our play, Genealogy. Most recently, we staged in May 2022 a successful run of our play The Oracle at Theatre for the New City. Our team put up the production OOB of The Jester’s Wife (Autumn 2023) and HONOR at The Chain Theatre Winter One-Act Festival (February 2024). HONOR went on to a praised three week run at the Gene Frankel Theatre in September & October of 2024. RETROSPECTIVE, our ninth production, is part of the Broadway Bound Theatre Festival at the AMT Theatre in August of 2025.
Why Knowledge Workings?
#maketheaterlive
Pay artists for their work and promote them to a wider audience
Enjoy the fruits of collaboration with artists and audience
Our Mission
Draw upon our knowledge of the world and its very different people to create plays that make people laugh even as they become aware of the complexity of topics on which we often talk past each other.
Create a company to fulfill this purpose by getting plays up for audiences with more concern for quick communication than eventual commercialization.
Fulfill what Hilton Als described, “Theatre isn’t real. It’s a refraction of reality, containing feelings and thoughts that are put forth, first, in a primary text, which the actor interprets—an interpretation that the director supports or edits, in an attempt to help build, in a made-up world, an atmosphere of verisimilitude.”
Have a damn good time while doing these things.
Our Team
Our amazing team of regulars and part-time volunteers are committed to these theater productions. Their talent and passion astonishes; their dedication to getting theater up energizes.
Notable collaborators include graceful helpers from the very start with our first reading April Woodall and John L. Payne. John Clay — director of Alms — is an invaluable colleague as are the stars of that sold-out production: Jack Farrell, Kathleen Huber, Aaron Long, Supporter from the get-go and marvelous actress and acting coach, Lynne Otis, James Lawson, Gahlia Eden, Sarah Lewis Smith, Alyssa Maria Poon, Marjorie Phillips Elliott, Hassan Hope, Jasmine Dorothy Haefner, John Blaylock, Andre Montgomery, Gifford Elliott, Lynn Kim Do, Winnie Stack, Atticus Cain, Mikelle Kelly, Patrick O’Shea, Ed Altman, A.J. Elliott on marketing, and Jason Elliott on this website domain transfer
Let’s make something together.
