Past
Grantees

So + Bex (So Mak and Bex Kwan) are not the same person. However, they are best friends who are both queer, gender non-conforming Chinese artists of roughly the same height (Bex is an inch taller), working with shadow, sound, and performance. Both alumni of EmergeNYC, the Hemispheric New York Emerging Performers Program, they began developing their collaborative artistic vocabulary at Brooklyn Arts Exchange (BAX), first as participants in the Upstart Program 2017-8, Space Grantees 2018, and then as Artists in Residence from 2019-2021. So + Bex were featured at The Brick’s 2018 Trans Theatre Festival, were Spring 2019 BRIClab residents, and were featured at the Highline's Out of Line series in July 2019. As solo artists, they have been invited to present at theaters, galleries, and universities in Singapore and the U.S., including La MaMa, the National Asian American Theater Company, and 3LD.

Fellowship Statement

When we first met in 2015, we were finding ourselves in situations of surreal overlapping identity where our housemates were confusing us with each other. It was both absurd and surprised neither of us. Our work always circles back to these questions: how can people like us—queer, gender non-conforming, East Asian people—build power with each other if we are seen as identical? How do our persons stretch to be at once threatening (especially in the age of the COVID-19 pandemic), harmless (especially in comparison to Black people), and interchangeable (especially in media)? How do we shoulder the perpetual foreignness that we are assigned while managing the distance that we feel from our own cultural and ancestral roots? Our process weaves dreamscapes from shadow puppetry, archival audio, and comedy to unearth the absurdity and revelation of our sameness.

Michael Torres was born and brought up in Pomona, California where he spent his adolescence as a graffiti artist. His debut collection of poems, An Incomplete List of Names (Beacon Press, 2020) was selected by Raquel Salas Rivera for the National Poetry Series and named one of NPR’s Best Books of 2020. His honors include awards and support from the National Endowment for the Arts, the McKnight Foundation, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, CantoMundo, VONA Voices, the Minnesota State Arts Board, the Jerome Foundation, the Camargo Foundation, and the Loft Literary Center. Currently he’s an Assistant Professor in the MFA program at Minnesota State University, Mankato, and a teaching artist with the Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop. Visit him at: michaeltorreswriter.com

Fellowship Statement

My writing often focuses on masculinity through a Mexican-American cultural lens. Currently, I’m fascinated by the idea of capacity, and the capaciousness of art in relation to my own self as brown man in America. Moreover, I’m interested in where this fascination with capacity is rooted.

Since the publication of An Incomplete List of Names, I’ve been working on poems and creative nonfiction prose. The poems approach capacity by way of the metaphysical. The nonfiction work seeks to explore capacity through how I understand my own brown body in its various roles—as father, husband, brother, son, homie, colleague—as I move through life in the Midwest, as I exist in academia, as I consider pop culture, and when I visit California, leaning back in the passenger seat of my homie’s Cutlass—windows rolled down, my right arm hanging out the window.

Saymoukda (she/her) is an award-winning Lao American poet and playwright born in a Thai refugee camp and raised in Rondo, Saint Paul, Minnesota. She is the author of the children’s book When Everything Was Everything, several plays, and currently serves as the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation’s Playwright in Residence with Theater Mu.

Fellowship Statement

It’s an honor to be awarded a Jerome Hill Fellowship for my work in theater. In my bones, I feel that I’m more than a playwright. I’m a creative legacy-architect. The Lao are not often part of public discourse. I believe that my plays are roadmaps for people to further engage with the histories, experiences, and stories from the Lao diaspora.

During the fellowship, I’ll be taking classes to hone the technical side of playwriting, read scripts, attend virtual performances, and be in conversation with my peers. I’ll also use my time to develop Motherland Orphans, a play about the generation of Southeast Asian Americans who were not born in their “motherland” but are tethered to her through stories, song, food, language, and refugee-love languages.

Thank you, Jerome Foundation. This former refugee’s heart is screaming with joy!

Chamindika Wanduragala is a Sri Lankan American puppet artist/stop motion filmmaker with a visual arts background, and a DJ (DJ Chamun). She loves transporting people to another world where you believe inanimate objects are alive and you feel the sense of joy that comes from having your imagination expanded.

Wanduragala is the founder and Executive/Artistic Director of Monkeybear’s Harmolodic Workshop. She’s inspired by creating a platform for other Native, Black, IPOC artists to explore puppetry, where they get funds, mentorship and studio access to develop creative and technical skills in contemporary puppetry. Wanduragala’s work has been supported by the Henson Foundation, Jerome Foundation, MRAC and MN State Arts Board, and her last puppet theater production was presented by Pillsbury House Theatre. You can see her work (and hear some playlists!) at www.chamindika.com

Fellowship Statement

Puppetry’s surreal nature gives me a sense of freedom to explore without fear. It’s also pure magic/joy when audiences feel that the puppets are truly ALIVE! Bringing the objects to life is really important to me, so I’m grateful for the support of other Native, Black, IPOC puppeteers I’ve gotten to know through Monkeybear.

My first puppet piece was a few years ago, so I’m excited to focus on artistic development in the next few years, moving towards an interdisciplinary practice: embedding stop motion animation into live puppet performance, learning sound design for my work by diving into modular synths (I’m excited by its sense of play, which connects so well with puppetry), creating puppet films and honing my directing skills so I can take the performative aspect to the next level. I’m currently working on my second short film, which incorporates stop motion animation and puppetry (live action).

Delina White is a Native apparel designer, beadwork artist and Indigenous materials jewelry maker. She is a member of the Pillager Band of Minnesota Chippewa and resides on the Leech Lake Reservation in northern Minnesota. She mixes traditionally indigenous materials with her original designed fabrics, including fabrics from around the world found among the woodland peoples through centuries of trade. She uses her art to communicate the values and beliefs of the Anishinaabeg, as an intergenerational cultural knowledge learner from her grandmother. Delina was recognized as one of Six MN Star Tribune’s 2019 Artists of the Year, for her work with the Hearts of Our People, a landmark exhibition as the first major thematic show to explore the artistic achievements of Native women. Her Woodland Scarf placed 2nd in USA Today’s “10 Splurge-worthy Gifts of 2020,” and was named, “2020 Artist in Business Leadership Fellow” by the First Peoples Fund.

Fellowship Statement

Artists provide inspiration to make change, protect, and thrive in a better world. I use fashion as a narrative to assert rights for equity, protect our sacred sites and environment, and to show cultural pride as sovereign nations. We all use fashion to make a declaration of opinion, attitudes and outlook on life. My goal is to continue advocating the importance of arts programming throughout Minnesota and beyond, to tap into the talents and grow business skills of Native artists and work with families engaging the youth in creative placemaking for better, healthier communities. It is my responsibility to preserve the ancestral knowledge and share to advance what artists envisions for themselves and our communities. This fellowship will provide support that will allow me to study apparel as a catalyst to wider approaches of learning, research and creative exploration to truly become an asset of my community and nation.

Whitney White is an Obie Award and Lily Award-winning director, writer, and musician originally from Chicago. She is a believer of alternative forms of performance, multi-disciplinary work, and collaborative processes. Her original musical Definition was part of the 2019 Sundance Theatre Lab, and her five-part musical exploration of Shakespeare’s Women, Reach for It, is currently under commission with the American Repertory Theater in Boston. Past fellowships include the New York Theatre Workshop’s 2050 Fellowship, Ars Nova’s Makers Lab, Colt Coeur Theater and the Drama League. White received an MFA in acting from Brown University/Trinity Rep, and a BA in Political Science and Certificate in Musical Theatre from Northwestern University. Her recent directing includes The Amen Corner (Shakespeare Theatre Company), Our Dear Dead Drug Lord (WP Theatre and Second Stage, NYT Critic’s Pick), Aleshea Harris’ What to Send Up When it Goes Down (The Movement Theatre Company, Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, American Repertory Theatre, The Public Theater, NYT Critic’s Pick).

Fellowship Statement

As a creator, I am a believer of alternative forms of performance, multi-disciplinary work, and collaborative processes. I aspire to use performance across mediums to challenge understandings of blackness, femininity, and much more. I currently have two works in progress to which this funding, in addition to professional development and support, would go to: Macbeth In Stride and Definition. Both challenge musical theatre as a genre, and radically defy traditional structures. One is a look at the process of adaptation, while the other is completely original. Definition is being developed with The Bushwick Starr, and Macbeth In Stride is part of a five-part series with the American Repertory Theatre. Thank you again, and I look forward to the next two years.

Taja Will is a queer, Latinx (Chilean) adoptee, performer, choreographer, and Healing Justice practitioner based in the Twin Cities, the occupied land of the Dakota and Anishinaabe peoples. Will integrates improvisation, somatic modalities, text and vocals in contemporary performance that explores visceral connections to current socio-cultural realities through ritual, archetypes and everyday magic.

Will has been presented in Walker Art Center Choreographer’s Evening, Red Eye Theater, Right Here Showcase and the Candy Box Dance Festival and is the recipient of a 2018 McKnight Choreography Fellowship, administered by the Cowles Center and funded by The McKnight Foundation. Will recently received support from the National Association of Latinx Arts & Culture, the Minnesota State Arts Board, and Metropolitan Regional Arts Council. As a performer Will has collaborated with Sara Shelton Mann, Rosy Simas, Keith Hennessy, Pramila Vasudevan, Deborah Jinza Thayer, Timmy Rehborg, Body Cartography Project and Miguel Gutierrez among others.

Fellowship Statement

My work is conceptual, state-based, grounded in personal practice, and always in relationship to socio-cultural realities of the moment. In that, my areas of attention for the fellowship duration will include personal movement practice, mentorship, and writing/artist advocacy. For me, a weekly, uninterrupted personal movement practice is a foundation for my creativity, physical range, and the creation of new work. Mentorship is my primary affinity. I intend to continue my mentorship with Sara Shelton Mann, as she is willing and able, and start a mentorship with a voice-based artist and a contemporary performance artist who engages with writing. Another area of focus I’m invested in is writing, creative and pragmatic. I’m interested in developing tools for artists to encourage further equity in relationship with presenters and institutional partners, such as a values rider.

Rebekah Crisanta de Ybarra a.k.a. Lady Xøk (Maya-Lenca tribal citizen) is a Twin Cities-based multi/interdisciplinary artist, musician, and culture bearer whose work is rooted in Indigenous Futurisms. Performing as Lady Xøk, she creates multimedia light and shadow installations for immersive experimental storytelling mixing electric and Mesoamerican instruments. She co-founded Electric Machete Studios, a Latinx Art + Music cultural production house. Past works include Dimensions of Indigenous in 2016 at Intermedia Arts; Petroglyphs and Borders as part of the inaugural 2018 artist-in-residence at The M–Minnesota Museum of American Art; Star Girl Clan in 2018 at In the Heart of the Beast PuppetLab Fellow; Decolonial Maya Constellation Maps in 2019 at Minnesota Center for Book Arts as part of the Jerome Mentorship Fellow; and ongoing installation performances developed in part by Redeye Theatre, New Native Theatre, Monkeybear’s Harmolodic Workshop, Catalyst Arts, ArtShanty and current residency with New York-based theatre La MaMa. www.rebekahcrisanta.com

Fellowship Statement

My experimental interdisciplinary social practice (visual art, music, theatre, dance, literature, and puppetry) seeks to shift consciousness around immigration, borders, exodus and interconnectedness of Indigenous Peoples of the Americas and shared and erased ancient histories of collective liberation. Rooted in Indigenous Futurisms, Lenca cosmovision of Managuara, Latinx artesenias of Mesoamerica, and liberation theology of El Salvador, I am interested in the intersection of Low Art, High Art and the Nepantla in-between spaces where God, ancestors, timelessness, and dreams live. I explore the threads of connection between the seen and unseen worlds. I work from a generative space of meditation, ancestor whispers, play, and somatic response. I use transdisciplinary methods to reconstruct into living form Lenca archeology, to document and reimagine my people’s unwritten ancient history for a new future where Central Americans in exodus, First Americans, have a basic human right to migration on Turtle Island, a land traveled for millennia.

Nathan Yungerberg is a Brooklyn-based Afrosurrealist and storyteller whose plays have been developed or featured by The Cherry Lane Theatre, JAG Productions, LAByrinth Theater, Lorraine Hansberry Theater, The National Black Theatre, The Fire This Time Festival, 48 Hours in Harlem, The Lark, Roundabout Theatre Company, The Playwrights’ Center, Crowded Fire Theater, and The Bushwick Starr. He is one of seven Black playwrights commissioned by The New Black Fest for HANDS UP: 7 Playwrights, 7 Testaments published by Concord Theatricals, and adapted by BBC radio. Nathan’s play Esai’s Table was featured in The Cherry Lane Theatre’s 2017 Mentor Project (Mentored by Stephen Adly Guirgis). Awards, honors, and residencies: 2021 National Black Theatre of Harlem I AM SOUL residency, Blue Ink Playwriting Award (Finalist), 2019 Djerassi Resident Artist, The 2016 O’Neill National Playwrights Conference (Semifinalist), Ken Davenport 10-Minute Play Festival (Winner). Nathan is also a writer for Sesame Street.

Fellowship Statement

My work is driven by my journey of creating a black identity. I was adopted at two weeks old and raised by white parents in Wisconsin. My innovation is rooted in investing less in what hasn’t been done before and more into what is not done enough. For generations, the negative portrayals of black bodies have demonized and desecrated a culture filled with light. I seek to share the radiance and the heart of the Black soul in a way that is aspirational and illuminating. I am currently working on a play called Sweetwater: The Gospel of Iman for a residency at the National Black Theatre in Harlem. Sweetwater follows a brotherhood of six Black gay men through the 1980s AIDS crisis in New York City who call themselves the New Apostles, and their god is a god called joy, or resilience, a god of tactics, a god called tomorrow.