AMERICAN THEATRE | Orlando Award, McKnight Residency, McNally Award, and Extra

MINNEAPOLIS: The Dominic Orlando Fund has named Christian St. Croix the winner of the second annual Dominic Orlando Playwriting Award. St. Croix will obtain a $10,000 unrestricted award.

St. Croix is a San Diego-based queer Black playwright whose play We Are the Forgotten Beasts was a finalist for the O’Neill Nationwide Playwrights Convention in 2022. His work seeks to craft multidimensional characters with wry humor and reality, mixing slice-of-life narratives with magical realism.

Orlando was a playwright, screenwriter, director, and producer who co-founded the Workhaus Collective. He died in November 2021. Orlando was a Jerome Fellow on the Playwrights’ Middle, which sponsors the Dominic Orlando Playwriting Award. Finalists for the 2024 award embody Aimee Chou and Robert Alexander Wray.

The Playwrights’ Middle has awarded Roger Q. Mason the McKnight Nationwide Residency and Fee. Mason will journey to Minneapolis to create a brand new play, interact with native artists, and obtain developmental help. They can even obtain a $15,000 fee.

Mason is a author, performer, filmmaker, and educator whose work has been seen on the Circle within the Sq. Studying Collection. They’re the recipient of the Dramatists Guild Basis’s inaugural Catalyst Fellowship and an alum of the Ma-Yi Writers Lab, Web page 73’s Interstate 73 Writers Group, and the Major Levels Writing Cohort. Mason is a member of the college at CalArts. They’ll use the McKnight Residency to develop the efficiency work Mahogany Corridor, in regards to the life and legacy of Lulu White.

The McKnight Nationwide Residency and Fee helps a longtime playwright from outdoors Minnesota who demonstrates a sustained physique of labor, dedication, and distinct creative imaginative and prescient.

Arts Midwest has introduced the recipients of greater than $1.17 million in Shakespeare in American Communities grants, with roughly $1 million going to 43 skilled theatre corporations partnering with colleges, and $170,000 going to 7 organizations working with college students within the juvenile justice system.

Now in its twenty first yr Shakespeare in American Communities is a theatre program of the Nationwide Endowment for the Arts in partnership with Arts Midwest. This system helps high-quality productions and academic actions exploring the work of William Shakespeare in center colleges, excessive colleges, and juvenile justice amenities all through the USA.

Theater corporations select to both carry out a play by Shakespeare or conduct performances that use the works of William Shakespeare as an inspiration. Together with these performances, every firm will host instructional actions for college students to creatively discover Shakespeare’s work and its context. Performances and academic occasions will happen between Aug. 1, 2024 and July 31, 2025.

Candidates can select grant awards starting from $15,000 to $25,000 to assist smaller organizations meet the required match extra simply. 4 new juvenile justice grantees had been awarded this yr and 6 new grantees had been awarded colleges grants.

The juvenile justice grantees embody Southwest Shakespeare Firm, Gateway Regional Arts Middle, Youth Arts: Unlocked, ¡Oye! Group, Drama Membership, Junior Gamers, and Texas Shakespeare Pageant.

The colleges grantees embody Alabama Shakespeare Pageant, A Noise Inside, Marin Shakespeare Firm, San Francisco Shakespeare Pageant, The Middle for the Arts, Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum, Colorado Shakespeare Pageant, Theatreworks Colorado Springs, Hartford Stage, Valley Shakespeare Pageant, The Andrew Keegan Theatre Firm, GableStage, Theater with a Mission (TWAM), Atlanta Shakespeare Firm, Riverside Theatre, Idaho Shakespeare Pageant, Actors’ Shakespeare Challenge, Commonwealth Shakespeare Firm, Shakespeare & Firm, Theater at Monmouth, Northern Lakes Arts Affiliation, Montana Shakespeare within the Parks, North Carolina Stage Firm, the Rose Theater, the Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey, Catskill Mountain Shakespeare, the Performing Firm, the Neo-Political Cowgirls, Theatre for a New Viewers, Cincinnati Shakespeare Firm, Portland Middle Stage, Lantern Theater Firm, Pennsylvania Shakespeare Pageant, Quintessence Theatre, Nashville Shakespeare Pageant, Tennessee Shakespeare Firm, Shakespeare Dallas, Texas Shakespeare Pageant, Utah Shakespeare Pageant, Barter Theatre, Seattle Rep, American Gamers Theatre, and Black Arts MKE.

BOSTON: The New England Basis for the Arts (NEFA) has introduced the 12 recipients of the Nationwide Theater Challenge Creation and Touring awards in addition to the 12 recipients of Artist Improvement awards, totaling almost $1.3 million.

The Nationwide Theater Challenge (NTP) promotes the event and touring of artist-led, ensemble, and devised theatre works. Along with important funding, NTP assembles a nationwide community of manufacturing theatres, presenters, and ensembles.

This yr, Creation and Touring grant recipients are every awarded a complete of $111,750. A portion of this award helps the creation and improvement of the brand new work, whereas $10,000 of the award is allotted to help the executive work required for creating and touring. The rest of the award is for artist-directed allocations to presenters to help artist charges through the NTP Presentation Grant.

The 12 recipients and tasks are All My Relations Collective, New York Metropolis, Skeleton Canoe; André de Quadros, Boston, The Slaying of Innocence; Candace L Feldman, Lansing, Kans., Many Methods To Elevating A Fist; Carrie Rodriguez/Oscar Cásares/Joel Salcido, Austin, Postcards From the Border, 4 Larks, Los Angeles, I Noticed a Crescent Moon above a Department of Silver (working title); Goat within the Highway, New Orleans, Carlota; Jaronzie Harris, Boston, The Lot Subsequent Door; LIZN’BOW – Liz Ferrer & Bow Ty, Miami, Novelas de Niñas; LubDub Theatre Co, New York Metropolis, The Magic Bullet; Monique Martin, New York Metropolis, Minty Contemporary Circus; Apparent Company, Philadelphia, Area Opera and Papel Machete, Cambridge, Mass., On the Eve of Abolition | La víspera de la abolición.

NTP finalists who aren’t awarded the Creation and Touring grant every obtain a $10,000 Artist Improvement Grant. These recipients are Inventive Care Ensemble, Milwaukee, Wisc., Inside A Single Rose; Derek Lee McPhatter, Chicago, water riot in beta: a cyber punk rock opera (“water riot” for brief); Faultline Ensemble, Halifax, Vt., Counting Pebbles; Latino Theater Firm, Los Angeles, New Work by Latino Theater Firm; On the lookout for Lilith Theatre Firm, Louisville, Ky., Lifecycle of a Blackberry; Love Drive, New York Metropolis, Love Drive; Nekaa Lab / Sachiyo Takahashi, New York Metropolis, Shinnai Meets Puppetry: One Evening in Winter & The Peony Lantern; Rising Youth Theatre, Phoenix, Keysmash: A Dialog About Psychological Well being; Shayok Misha Chowdhury, New York Metropolis, Rheology; Sugar Vendil/Isogram, New York Metropolis, Antonym: the other of nostalgia; The Ume Group, Seattle, The Ume Group’s PASSING; and Wonderlust Productions, Saint Paul, Minn., New work by Wonderlust Productions (working title Caregiver Play Challenge). Discover out extra in regards to the recipients right here.

PHILADELPHIA: Philadelphia Theatre Firm (PTC) has named MK Tuomanen the 2024 Terrence McNally Award winner for his or her play Evening Science. Generously funded by the Terrence McNally Basis, the award celebrates the life, works, and numerous invaluable contributions of American playwright, librettist, and LGBTQ+ trailblazer Terrence McNally. In celebrating McNally’s life and work, the award identifies Philadelphia’s most promising early-career playwrights and champions the town’s unimaginable artistry, range, and expertise. Given as soon as each two years, the McNally Award supplies a $10,000 money prize, dramaturgical help, entry to the PTC neighborhood, and a public studying of the play.  

Amongst greater than 60 submissions, playwright and theatre artist MK Tuomanen (they/them) stood out with their play Evening Science. Tuomanen attended the Lecoq Faculty of Motion Theater (Paris, France) and has devoted 17 years to performing and creating theatre in Philadelphia. Named “Greatest Theatre Artist” by Philadelphia Journal in 2015, they’re a Jerome Hill Artist Fellow and a Haas Rising Artist Award recipient. Their performs embody Marcus/EMMA (or Marcus Garvey and EMMA Goldman Have Scorching Scorching Intercourse), produced by InterAct Theatre, Peaceful Kingdom, produced by Orbiter 3, and Evening Science, first developed with the Wilma Theater by the Virginia B. Toulmin Basis. Their solo works embody Good day! Unhappiness! and Think about The Cow. Tuomanen’s most up-to-date multimedia exhibit, John Jarboe’s Rose: You Are Who You Eat, is presently on show on the Cloth Workshop Museum by September 2024, and beforehand confirmed on the Guggenheim Museum, FringeArts, LaMama (UTR Fest), and Woolly Mammoth. They’re an organization member of Utilized Mechanics and an related artist with the Bearded Girls Cabaret.

Evening Science dives into the feckless hope of scientific discovery, the hazards of trusting others of your individual species, and the truth that any lovely thought will be became a weapon.

This yr’s panel of judges included Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright James Ijames; playwright and head of the Theater Program on the Group School of Philadelphia Quinn Eli; Barrymore nominated actor, playwright, and former McNally Award winner Stephanie Kyung-Solar Walters; director, playwright, and dramaturg Lily Wolff; and PTC drtistic administrators Tyler Dobrowsky and Taibi Magar. Judges chosen one grand prize in addition to three finalists Lumin by Emma Gibson, The Skinny Killer Inside by Genne Murphy, and ass2mouth by Haygen-Brice Walker. 

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