Past
Grantees

DANCE THEATER WORKSHOP, New York City, received a grant of $32,500 for emerging choreographers commissions for the creation and production of new works. The mission of Dance Theater Workshop is to serve the broader dance community with a commitment to identify, present, and support independent contemporary artists and companies and to advance dance and live performance in New York and worldwide. Central to this mission is a dedication to providing independent artists with production programs and resources designed to nurture their creativity and growth over time, directly addressing the needs of performing artists at all stages in their careers. The commissions provide critical support to offset the costs of creating new work to premiere at Dance Theater Workshop.

NEW YORK THEATRE WORKSHOP, New York City, received a grant of $20,000 to support the participation of emerging New York City and Minnesota-based playwrights in the 2010-11 Artist Development Activities program. New York Theatre Workshop is a contemporary theatre company committed to the development of innovative theatre by supporting theater artists at all stages of their careers and providing an environment where work can be created free from the artistic compromise and forbidding financial demands often associated with commercial ventures. The Workshop is dedicated to exploring and presenting theatrical experiences that reflect, respond to, and invigorate the world in which we live and work. The Workshops Artist Development Activities represent a commitment to supporting emerging playwrights, the larger New York City artistic community, and the process of creating new work. Activities include approximately 100 readings a year, small-scale studio productions, artist residencies, fellowships, a cultural exchange program, and numerous free rehearsal space opportunities.

The mission of the NORTHERN CLAY CENTER, Minneapolis, Minnesota, received $26,500 for the 2011 Ceramic Artist Project Grants Program, which will provide three $6,000 project grants to emerging ceramic artists from Minnesota for activities in 2011-12. The Centers mission is the advancement of the ceramic arts. Programs include classes and workshops for children and adults at all levels of proficiency, exhibitions of work by regional, national, and international artists; studio space and grants for artists; and a sales gallery representing many of the top ceramic artists from the region and elsewhere. The applicants identify the content and purpose of their projects. Typically, this includes a range of activity from the purchase of equipment to facilitate an aesthetic or technical investigation to the provision of an honorarium to allow uninterrupted work time and studio rental. The project grant year concludes with a group exhibition at the Northern Clay Center.

CHRISTINA A. OLIVARES, New York, New York, will travel to Cuba to deepen her understanding of Cuban Santera for a series of poems she is writing, and to immerse herself in contemporary Cuban poetry, which will strengthen and inform her writing in English and in Spanish. She is writing a series of poems that hold Babalu Aye, the Cuban Santera orisha (akin to a saint) responsible for sickness and healing, as the driving metaphor. The poems explore the story of one member of her family, born in Cuba, who migrated to the United States in the mid-1960s and soon after became schizophrenic. She will visit museums and the Yoruba Cultural Association of Cuba, meet with the highly regarded Cuban poet Domingo Alfonso and other poets, take an intensive class at the University of Havana in advanced Spanish, attend local poetry readings, and visit sites that will teach her more about Santera. This will enable her to bring this series of poems to completion.

PANGEA WORLD THEATER, Minneapolis, Minnesota, received a two-year grant of $32,000 in support of the participation of emerging playwrights in Alternate Visions. The mission of Pangea World Theater is to illuminate the human condition, celebrate cultural differences, and promote human rights by creating and presenting international, multidisciplinary theater. Jerome funding will assist Pangea in developing new works by providing participating emerging artists with dramaturgy, workshops, and public readings to prepare their performances for mainstage productions. Pangea hosts discussions between artists and audiences and facilitates public dialogues on issues raised in each of the plays. Over the course of two years, five emerging Minnesota artists will receive Jerome support.

ALISON ROH PARK, Jackson Heights, New York, will travel to Iksan, South Korea, and the surrounding area, to visit her fathers family and study the role of agriculture in her family and the impact of the economic shift to agricultural exports. This information will be used to create new poetry and prose and create community dialogue. The notion of displacement, gender, and race deeply affect her work. While the primary focus will be on the farming lifestyle within a broader political context, the trip will additionally be an invaluable study of gender roles and family structure, within the context of the shift from rural to urban life.

IRINA PATKANIAN was awarded a grant in support of Living Here. Kamchatka tale., an feature-length documentary. The film tells the story of the Russian/Itelmen community of Dolinovka, a village on the Kamchatka peninsula, across from Alaskas Aleutian Islands, on a river that has been eroding its banks for decades. In the 1980s, the central Soviet government decided to save Dolinovka by constructing a modern town in a drier location nearby. Residents packed up their wooden houses in Old Dolinovka and moved to New Dolinovka, where their concrete apartments had plumbing and electricity, and the town had schools and a restaurant. With Perestroika, though, government financing stopped and, in turn, so did the towns supply of water and heat. Residents were ordered to vacate their premises and return to Old Dolinovka. The still-unfinished New Dolinovka turned into a ghost town, where the ghosts of the Soviet regime found permanent refuge. Today, New Dolinovka is a monument to a failed Soviet dream, completely reclaimed by wildlife. Through this highly experimental and very nontraditional documentary film, Irina Patkanian wants to give audiences a glimpse into the lives of four individuals, all representative of the common people of Russia, and in looking into their lives reflect on such urgent universal themes as abandonment and responsibility, security and freedom.

PENUMBRA THEATRE COMPANY, St. Paul, Minnesota, received $15,000 to support the participation of emerging Minnesota and New York City-based playwrights in the 2010-11 OKRA program. Penumbra creates professional productions that are artistically excellent, thought provoking, relevant, and illuminate the human condition through the prism of the African American experience. Its activities are organized into three integrated programs: the mainstage series, education, and new play development. The last, the OKRA New Play Program, is a rigorous culturally specific program in which playwrights develop their plays in a safe, nurturing environment that actively invests in developing authentic African American voices. OKRA makes an investment in emerging playwrights, allowing for play development without restriction or reservation, and assuring guidance from established professional artists who have a deep understanding of the Penumbra aesthetic. The program has three components: the expansion of early ideas, a reading series, and week-long workshops, with the ultimate goal of moving new plays into production. Submissions and inquiries are accepted throughout the year.

PERFORMANCE SPACE 122, New York City, received a grant of $42,500 to provide commissions to emerging New York City and/or Minnesota artists who are producing new works for presentation at P.S. 122. P.S. 122 is dedicated to supporting and presenting artists whose work challenges the traditional boundaries of dance, theatre, music, and performance. Committed to exploring innovative form as well as material, P.S. 122 is steadfast in its search for pioneering artists from a diversity of cultures and points of view. This support comes to P.S. 122 during a time in which it is increasing commission and performance fees and restructuring its support system for artists. It is also assessing the in-kind services it provides to artists, particularly in the realm of professional development support. It hopes that its new model, which will be achieved over the course of a few years, will benefit both artists and audiences.

The Jerome Foundation elected to renew its $1,000 affiliate membership in PHILANTHROPY NEW YORK and make a contribution toward the organizations general program in 2010. Philanthropy New York is the principal professional community of New York philanthropic organizations, with 285 members encompassing private, corporate, family, and public grantmaking foundations. Its mission is to strengthen the capacity of grantmaking organizations to fulfill their respective missions to serve the public good. It offers professional education programs; supports funder networks and partnerships; and produces publications and other communications tools for the media, policy makers and the public at large.

KAZ PHILLIPS, Brooklyn, New York, will travel to Jakarta, Indonesia, and Penang/George Town, Malaysia, to conduct research and acquire cultural experiences in order to create a feature-length film set in early 20th century Jakarta. His work will be based on the supposedly true story of Banda Gertrude, a Eurasian woman living in Jakarta, who acted as a spy for the Japanese, the British, and the Americans. Gertrude died before a firing squad in Korea in 1952, meeting the same fate as her alleged mother, Mata Hari. Phillips research will provide him with an understanding of the complex political and cultural currents of Indonesia as the foundation for his film

The Foundation provided $9,000 to Pillsbury House Theatre in support of the mainstage production of Pas Hat: Liberian Legacy, the Three Mondays reading series, and developmental activities associated with preparing two new plays for full production the following season. These particular projects fall within a larger commitment to develop and produce work by new and emerging artists.

PILLSBURY HOUSE THEATRE, Minneapolis, Minnesota, received $36,500 in support of the 2011 Naked Stages program. The Theatre was launched in 1992 as a professional arts institution committed to the Settlement House tradition of creating art in collaboration with community. The mission of Pillsbury House Theatre is to create challenging theater to inspire choice, change, and connection. The Naked Stages program is a seven- to nine-month development program that provides time, money, and mentoring to four emerging performance artists. In addition to regular feedback sessions, the artists, who are selected from a competitive open call, participate in artistic workshops and monthly production meetings focused on the business side of art production, from audience development to technical support. Culminating performances are the final step of a multi-layered program designed to empower artists to be their most bold and creative and to challenge artists and audiences alike to push past their previous boundaries.

PILLSBURY HOUSE THEATRE, Minneapolis, Minnesota, received a grant of $9,000 to support the creation, development, and production of new works by emerging artists through mainstage productions, an annual reading series, workshop development, and the commissioning of new plays. The Theatre was launched in 1992 as a professional arts institution committed to the Settlement House tradition of creating art in collaboration with community. The mission of Pillsbury House Theatre is to create challenging theater to inspire choice, change, and connection.

Jerome Foundation provided $36,500 to PILLSBURY HOUSE THEATRE, Minneapolis, Minnesota, in support of the 2010 Naked Stages program. Naked Stages fosters artistic development among emerging performance artists. Four artists or groups of artists are selected each year through an open application and panel review process. Participants attend creative and production meetings, developing their work in the context of peer learning and mentoring. Works are presented to the public at the end of the program.

PILLSBURY HOUSE THEATRE, Minneapolis, Minnesota, received a grant of $34,500 to support the Late Nite Series. The Theatre creates challenging theatre to inspire choice, change, and connection. Through its mainstage season and community engagement programs, Pillsbury House Theatre illuminates the differences that make each person unique and the similarities that bring people together, within an artistically engaging context that promotes understanding and leads to positive action. In Late Nite, emerging artists working within and across the disciplines of dance, music, poetry, and theatre explore the intersections of social change, community, and identity, and push the boundaries of their art form. The purpose of Late Nite is to support emerging artists by creating an opportunity for them to develop and perform new work in front of an audience.

PLAYWRIGHTS HORIZONS, New York City, received a two-year grant of $46,000 in support of the participation of emerging New York City and Minnesota-based playwrights in American Voice activities. The mission of Playwrights Horizons is to support and develop the work of contemporary American playwrights, composers, and lyricists, and to produce their new plays and musicals. Throughout its 39-year history, Playwrights Horizons has served as a launching pad for emerging writers as well as a home where established writers can bring their new work. American Voice activities include evaluation of script submissions, cultivating relationships with writers and scouting for new writing talent, developmental readings, and musical theater workshops. The theater strives to provide each writer with an individual development process that suits his/her specific needs and the needs of the work. Programs are managed with the understanding that writers create new works with the ultimate goal of fully realizing them in production. Playwrights Horizons takes very seriously its role in developing new works and laying the foundation for a successful production at Playwrights Horizons or elsewhere.

THE PLAYWRIGHTS CENTER, Minneapolis, Minnesota, received a one-year grant of $107,000 in support of the 2011-12 Many Voices Fellowship Program and the Jerome Fellowship in Playwriting. The Playwrights Center champions playwrights and plays to build upon a living theater that demands new and innovative works. The Center is a national resource for script development, and provides a range of services for writers at all stages of their careers. Playwrights Center Jerome Fellowships are awarded annually to emerging playwrights who receive funds and services to aid in the development of their craft. They must live and work in the Twin Cities area for the year of their fellowship in order to fully participate in the program. Stipends support writing time for the playwrights, who also receive readings and workshops, connections with other institutions and programs, and professional development support. The Many Voices Fellowship provides stipends, education, and opportunities to develop new work with theater professionals. The program is designed to increase cultural diversity in the contemporary theater. It awards five fellowships to artists of color who are interested in developing their playwriting skills and creating theater in a supportive artists community.

MARLO PORAS, Brooklyn, New York, will travel to Thailand to research the idea of making a documentary film about Christina Arnold, who escaped the Children of God Cult when she was 21 years old and now leads a nonprofit organization that is focused on preventing human trafficking. To gain a more personal understanding of the anti-trafficking movement, Poras will attend the summer study program in Thailand sponsored by Arnold through the Prevent Human Trafficking Institute (PHT). This will provide him with the time to experience Arnold in action and understand the focus of her work as the basis for his intimate film portrait of her.

A grant was awarded to ANN PRIM, St. Paul, for Little Words, a narrative short that is the first story of The Vellum Trilogy, a collection of three fictional vignettes written by Ann Prim in the fall of 2009. Each story of The Vellum Trilogy takes a brief but intimate look into the lives of gay women writers and painters. The view is a private glimpse, where life and art intersect and memory is a story of interior landscapes. The Vellum Trilogy was conceived to be seen either as a single work or as three individual short films. Little Words is the story of a young writer, Rhys, who values her private world of words over all else. She is a Post-Modernist outsider who methodically strips from her life that which interferes and distracts. Beginning work on her second novel and awaiting word on whether her first novel will be published, she leaves her lover only to encounter someone who completely fractures her solitude and gives her the opportunity to reassess her reclusiveness.