Past
Grantees

THE EUGENE ONEILL THEATER CENTER, New York City and Waterford, Connecticut, received a two-year grant of $44,000 in support of the participation of emerging New York City and Minnesota playwrights in the 2003 and 2004 Playwrights Conference. Founded in 1964 for the purpose of focusing on the development of new playwrights for the stage, the ONeill is home to six distinct programming divisions, of which the Playwrights Conference is a primary one. Through a national review process, playwrights are invited to participate in a month-long residency program. They develop plays in collaboration with directors, dramaturgs and actors of the highest caliber. Each play receives two staged readings open to the public. The ONeill emphasizes the nurturance and empowerment of playwrights. Each script is given space and time in which to grow at its own pace. Fifteen invited playwrights are served each summer in this Conference, immersing themselves in the development of their own works and observing the processes undertaken by their colleagues.

Curator and festival programmer DEAN OTTO will attend the San Francisco Gay and Lesbian Film Festival and the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, known as Outfest. Otto is programmer of the Minneapolis/St. Paul Gay and Lesbian Film Festival and will use his trips to San Francisco and Los Angeles as crucial opportunities to preview and select work for the Twin Cites Festival. He will also have an opportunity to meet with other queer programmers and curators to learn more about work that he is not familiar with.

PANGEA WORLD THEATER, Minneapolis, Minnesota, is committed to international works, styles and traditions that illuminate the human condition, end divisiveness and celebrate difference. It brings communities together through theater productions, workshops and speakers. Jerome Foundation made a grant commitment of $10,000 to support Bridges, a series of performance events, panels and workshops designed to create passageways across art forms, cultures, aesthetics, class, borders and traditions. The idea is to co-mingle art forms and cultures, foster new collaborations among diverse artists, encourage those artists to take risks in their work, and create bridges of understanding for audiences. Over the next two years, Pangea expects to present two or three collaborative works emanating from Bridges.

PATRICKS CABARET, Minneapolis, Minnesota, received a two-year grant commitment of $40,000 in support of the presentation of new works in development, by emerging creative artists, within the Core Program. The Cabaret serves and supports artists in their growth and development by encouraging them to take risks, try new things and present works-in-progress. It serves a diverse range of Twin Cities-based artists and is particularly known for its diverse programming. On the second and third weekends of each month, the Cabaret presents six artists who receive 15 minutes to test new works before an audience. The evening features a mix of experience levels and arts disciplines.

PILLSBURY HOUSE THEATRE, Minneapolis, Minnesota, received two grants from the Jerome Foundation. The first, in the amount of $12,000, is dedicated to the development and production of new plays by emerging playwrights. The 2003 mainstage season of Pillsbury House Theatre includes three works by Melissa James Gibson, Stephen Guirgis and Zell Miller, III. In addition, the Theatre will produce its annual reading series titled Three Mondays, showcasing the works of new and emerging playwrights. A second grant commitment of $32,500 was made to the Theatre in support of the continuation of the series Late Nite: Non-English Speaking Spoken Here. Formerly housed at Penumbra Theatre, this series will be re-visioned and piloted by Pillsbury House Theatre. It will feature new commissioned works developed by emerging performance artists. Late Nite represents a transformation of culture where text, music, spoken word, sounds and images weave together a fearless celebration of new artists, new voices and new art. Late Nite artists explore the cross-currents of social change, community and identity. The theme for the 2003 series is Keeping My Bags PackedMoving to New Neighborhoods.

PILLSBURY HOUSE THEATRE, Minneapolis, Minnesota, received two grants from the Jerome Foundation. The first, in the amount of $12,000, is dedicated to the development and production of new plays by emerging playwrights. The 2003 mainstage season of Pillsbury House Theatre includes three works by Melissa James Gibson, Stephen Guirgis and Zell Miller, III. In addition, the Theatre will produce its annual reading series titled Three Mondays, showcasing the works of new and emerging playwrights. A second grant commitment of $32,500 was made to the Theatre in support of the continuation of the series Late Nite: Non-English Speaking Spoken Here. Formerly housed at Penumbra Theatre, this series will be re-visioned and piloted by Pillsbury House Theatre. It will feature new commissioned works developed by emerging performance artists. Late Nite represents a transformation of culture where text, music, spoken word, sounds and images weave together a fearless celebration of new artists, new voices and new art. Late Nite artists explore the cross-currents of social change, community and identity. The theme for the 2003 series is Keeping My Bags PackedMoving to New Neighborhoods.

A two-year grant of $46,000 was authorized for PLAYWRIGHTS HORIZONS, New York City, a theater dedicated to the support and development of contemporary American playwrights, composers and lyricists, and to the production of their new works. Since its founding in 1971, Playwrights Horizons has helped to launch the careers of hundreds of playwrights and has established a nationwide reputation as a leading advocate for new plays and musicals. It conducts up to 20 readings and musical theater workshops each year. Its literary department maintains an open-door script submission policy. Jerome funding supports the substantial services that this theater provides to emerging playwrights.

THE PLAYWRIGHTS CENTER, Minneapolis, Minnesota, received a two-year grant of $42,000 in support of the 2004 and 2005 Many Voices Program. The Centers mission is to fuel the theater by providing services that support playwrights and playwriting. It is committed to nurturing artistic excellence and new visions of theater, fostering playwright initiative and leadership, practicing cultural pluralism, discovering emerging artists, advocating for playwrights, connecting playwrights with audiences, and developing a community for new work. The Many Voices Program is an annual opportunity for emerging playwrights of color to develop their skills. Eight playwrights are competitively selected to receive stipends, play development support through Center programs, opportunities to take classes at the Center, and participation in Roundtable meetings. The Roundtable creates a home for the year, a safe place to come together to explore ideas, share concerns, and read scripts in progress. Roundtable meetings are facilitated by an experienced playwright or director of color, with expertise in working with emerging writers.

A similarly long-standing commitment of the Foundation has been the Jerome Playwriting Fellowship Program at THE PLAYWRIGHTS CENTER, Minneapolis, Minnesota. The Center fuels the theater by providing services that support playwrights and playwriting. It is committed to nurturing artistic excellence and new visions of theater, fostering playwright initiative and leadership, practicing cultural pluralism, discovering emerging artists, advocating for playwrights and their work, connecting playwrights with audiences, and developing a community for new work. Jerome dollars have provided support for a program in which playwrights are selected from a national applicant pool for 12-month residencies in Minnesota. Each of the Jerome Fellows receives a $9,000 stipend and additional support for script development. The Center believes that this is a Fellowship program that truly launches the careers of emerging playwrights on regional and national levels. A two-year grant of $109,000 was awarded to The Playwrights Center in continued support of the Jerome Playwriting Fellowship Program.

A two-year grant of $40,000 was authorized for REPERTORIO ESPAOL, New York City, in support of the Voces Nuevas program for emerging playwrights. The theater company presents Latin American, Spanish and Hispanic-American theater. It maintains a professional company of actors, singers and directors to perform works in the Spanish language. In Voces Nuevas, Repertorio Espaol presents readings and fully produced stage presentations of new works chronicling the experiences of second and third generation Latinos. Jerome dollars will assist with payments to playwrights, directors and actors for both readings and full productions.

REYNOLD REYNOLDS received support for Soil, an installation and short film resulting in a poetic document of decline, decay, and deterioration a return of all that is mortal to the soil.

Jerome Directors authorized a two-year grant of $20,000 to RHIZOME.ORG, New York City, in support of a commissioning program. rhizome.org is a leading on-line resource for and about new media artists and their work. It connects, educates, and serves the new media art community and the public through e-mail services, a web site and outreach events. It uses the Internet to facilitate a critical dialogue that is accessible, inclusive and ongoing, and to build community across geographic and cultural borders. The commissioning program provides fees to emerging artists working in new media. An annual call for proposals yields applications that are judged by an independent jury. Finished work is placed on-line at http://www.rhizome.org/commissions.

BEN RIESMAN, Minneapolis, MN, received a grant to support FLIGHT, a performance and video installation in which participants take part in a ritual that recalls NASA launches as well as religious practices, drawing linkages between religious and secular ritual experience.

ROULETTE INTERMEDIUM, New York City, received a two-year grant of $40,000 in continued support of the Commissioning Program for Emerging Composers. Roulette offers over 50 musical concerts each year, paying fees to artists, commissioning new works, providing publicity, offering production and recording facilities, and initiating recording and distribution programs. In 1998, Roulette mounted a pilot commissioning program for young experimental composers, with Jerome Foundation assistance. This new grant continues support for that program, whose purpose is to undercover new trends within fringe composers who generally have one form or another of electronics as a component of their compositions. The commissioned works are then performed on Roulettes season. The commissions are made through a nominating process involving people chosen for their knowledge of young experimental composers in New York City. The commission gives the artist the liberty and mandate to make a piece with sustained structural intention, which can withstand scrutiny and the focused listening experience that a Roulette concert provides.

RICHARD ROWLEY & JACQUELINE SOOHEN received a grant for The Fourth World War, an experimental film that weaves together intensely intimate footage from six conflictsin Argentina, Chiapis, Palestine, South Africa, Korea and the war on terror as it moves through New York, Afghanistan and Iraq. Its layered, polyphonic editing style reveals points of connection among communities coming to terms with the violent reorganization of every aspect of their lives and worlds.

Lute player PHILIP RUKAVINA will travel for one and a half months in Basel, Switzerland, to study the lute and vihuela da mano with Hopkinson Smith. The six-course vihuela da mano is the Spanish equivalent of the Renaissance six-course lute and an indirect ancestor of the modern guitar. The focus of Rukavinas studies will be on intabulations, or settings of vocal works, on the vihuela da mano by well-known vihuelistas. Smith is a top player and teacher of this style.

S.A.S.E.: THE WRITE PLACE, Minneapolis, Minnesota, received a two-year grant of $99,000 in support of three programs: the S.A.S.E./Jerome Fellowships, Mentor Program, and Verve Fellowship Program. S.A.S.E.: The Write Place, which takes writing out of the studio and into the streets, is a multi-purpose nonprofit literature organization that supports writing in an ever expanding arena of formats and genres. The S.A.S.E./Jerome fellowship program competitively awards stipends to five to seven emerging writers each year. The Verve Fellowship Program, piloted in 2001-02, provides support to spoken word artists. The Writer to Writer Mentor Program allows emerging writers to develop skills and confidence by establishing a connection with a seasoned mentor through group and one-on-one sessions

LYNNE SACHS received support for Visit to a State of Unbelonging, a 70-minute cine-essay that explores the various ways we can know, confront and identify with another human being. Using a pastiche of both authentic and fabricated artifacts, the film reconstructs the lives of three peoplethe father of the director, a distant relative who fled post-World War II Europe for the countryside of Brazil, and an Israeli woman encountered in a newspaper article.

ST. JOHN'S UNIVERSITY, Collegeville, Minnesota, received a two-year grant of $45,500 in support of the St. John's Pottery Emerging Artists Program. Under the direction of master potter Richard Bresnahan, St. John's Pottery educates students and artists in the philosophy and practices of sustainable resource development, involves them in a totally indigenous artistic environment in an academic setting, and assists local communities with the sustainable development of native resources. Each year, St. John's invites emerging artists from Minnesota and New York City to apply for two-month residencies at the Pottery, with unlimited access to raw materials, to produce new work. Artists working in any visual arts discipline are eligible. They receive honoraria, travel stipends, food, lodging, supplies and the experience of making work in a studio environment, with ample opportunity for mentorship and technical support.

RUTH SERGEL received support for Belle, a short narrative fable of old age and beauty, which explores the intersection of age, race and family ties; celebrating the challenges of our imperfect humanity.