Past
Grantees

S.A.S.E., Minneapolis, Minnesota, a new entity evolving from the former Whittier Writers' Workshop, is a literary arts organization which believes that multicultural programming is a means of empowerment and equality. S.A.S.E.'s mission is to provide a space and affordable, quality programming, developed and administered by a diverse group of people, to develop craft and present and publish work. Two mentoring programs are planned in the first year of operation. A Jerome Grant of $10,000 was authorized.

Writer MELISSA BIRCH and audio/video producer ELEANOR SAVAGE will travel for 25 days in Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Virginia, Georgia, North Carolina and Kentucky, gathering source material for a video piece and a radio series.

COLLEEN SHEEHY, an art historian and museum education director, will travel for three weeks to Grand Marais, Minnesota, to interview people associated with the Grand Marais Art Colony.

RICHARD SOLLY, a writer, will spend two weeks in Gibonston, Florida, to undertake research for a book of poems about the experience of pain and disability.

Arranger, composer and performer Tim Sparks received $4,300 to spend three weeks in Portugal. He'll study fado guitar techniques in Lisbon, for incorporation into a solo guitar project currently under development.

Carolyn Strachan received support for Drowned Rats, an allegorical comedy, a curious anthropological study of New Yorkers from a rat's point of view. Drowned Rats looks at our lives, through the eyes of the "other" voyeuristically, sometimes exotically, observing the rituals and minutiae of daily lives from the perspective of the underground.

Dancer Ponepraseuth Suryadhay received $1,450 for ten days of travel and study in Santa Ana, California, and Des Moines, Iowa. In California, she'll meet visit a former mentor in Laotian classical dance. In Iowa, she'll meet with members of the Natasinh National Lao Dance and Music Ensemble. It is Suryadhay's desire to revitalize herself as a dancer and work on making Laotian dance a vibrant part of the Twin Cities community.

Theater for the New City, New York City, received $10,000 to support its emerging playwrights program in the 1994-95 season. Theater for the New City nurtures and develops emerging playwrights by giving them space to produce their work.

Ella Troyano received support for Latin Boys Go To Hell, a feature film based on a novel by Andre Salas, a 24 year old, second generation Mexican American writer. The film is set in a working class Latino neighborhood in Brooklyn. Troyano will use a melodramatic style prevalent in much of Mexican popular culture. The film is intended

Artist/photographer KATHERINE TURCZAN will travel to Ukraine and Belarus, for four weeks, to photograph women, meet and study the work of contemporary female photographers.

Danspace Project, New York City, as fiscal agent for choreographer Donna Uchizono, received a two-year grant of $16,000 in general support of Uchizono's choreography in the current and in the 1995-96 seasons. Uchizono is developing the Ivy Project, which will premiere at Dance Theater Workshop in December of 1995. This is the second grant authorized for Uchizono's work.