FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: February 1, 2007
CONTACT: Shelley Orr
VP Communications, LMDA
619.873.5142
LMDA Announces RECIPIENTS of Residency, Dramaturg Driven, and Festival Travel grants
LMDA is pleased to announce the following six grant recipients. Residency Grants have been awarded to Joanne Zipay and The Richmond Shakespeare Festival, Lavina Jadhwani and the Silk Road Theatre Project, Julie Levene and Company One Theatre, and Jennifer Yirak and WayPlays Theatre Company. A Dramaturg Driven grant was awarded to Diane Brewer of the University of Evansville and a Festival Travel Grant was awarded to Adriana Bucz to attend Alberta Theatre Projects' Enbridge playRites Festival Blitz Weekend.
LMDA and HCC/LMDA Residency Grants
We are very pleased to award four Residency Grants for 2007. Two of the grants were awarded from LMDA grant funds and two by the Haymarket Community Corporation (HCC) in partnership with LMDA. These grants provide support for a dramaturg to work with a theatre on a production or a project. Preference is given to proposals that bring a dramaturg to theatres and projects that have not incorporated dramaturgs in the past.
The LMDA Residency Grants were chosen from among a field of excellent proposals because they expanded the arena of dramaturgy and the role of the dramaturg. The Richmond Shakespeare Festival (Richmond, Virginia) is adopting the directorial structure of Shakespeare's Globe Theatre and, with the assistance of LMDA’s grant, Joanne Zipay will take on the role of The Master of Verse, guiding actors “in the full realization of complex texts, references, and structures of verse and prose. [Joanne will serve as] an amalgamation of text coach, voice coach, and dramaturg.”
The Residency grant program will also enable Lavina Jadhwani to work with Chicago’s Silk Road Theatre Project, which began in response to 9/11 and anti-Muslim and Arab sentiments. The company has been expanded to integrate and represent the voices of peoples of the Silk Road from China to Italy and their diaspora communities “to promote discourse and dialogue among diverse communities in Chicago” and to bring new voices in theater into the American Canon.
The HCC/LMDA Residency grant has returned this year with two grants that will bring dramaturgy into two theatres in Boston. Dramaturg Jennifer Yirak will work with WayPlays Theater, which is committed to “encouraging a new culture of dramaturgical collaboration in the small theatre community in Boston.” Dramaturg Julie Levene will join Company One Theatre, which is in residence at the Boston Center for the Arts, and is committed to teaching, creating and presenting radical theatre to advance the city's cultural landscape, diversify the city's theater-going audience, and promote social consciousness.
Haymarket Community Corporation is a Massachusetts-based non-profit organization supporting the theater arts in its region in conjunction with the Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas. The LMDA is pleased that HCC has agreed to award Residency Grants for 2007 to these New England theater companies in a continuation of a partnership that supports innovative dramaturgs and theatre companies.
Dramaturg Driven Grants
Indiana-based dramaturg Diane Brewer is the latest recipient of LMDA's Dramaturg Driven Grant. Awarded in January 2007, the LMDA funds will support Diane's research for a new work that will use interviews of European radicals (in politics and performance) and their mothers as the basis for a performance piece. Diane will spearhead the development of the piece from these interactions. Interview sessions in Athens, Berlin, London, and Dublin will be documented and the performance text will be developed in the US during 2007/08.
Dramaturg Driven Grants provide seed money directly to dramaturgs to help get an idea off the ground. The grants support dramaturgs’ creative endeavors and recognize the artistic potential of dramaturgs in the creation of new work for the theatre.
LMDA Festival Travel Grant
Adriana Bucz was awarded LMDA's most recent Festival Travel Grant. Adriana will attend the upcoming Alberta Theatre Projects' Enbridge playRites Festival Blitz Weekend in Calgary, March 2-4, 2007. The Festival Travel Grant fosters the propagation of new theatre work by providing funds toward travel costs for a dramaturg to attend to a new play festival that she or he has not yet visited.
Many thanks to ATP for supporting this grant, and to all the other play development festivals across North America that partnered with LMDA to encourage LMDA members to attend festivals that they had never visited. This form of cross-pollination is vital to our field and LMDA is proud to be assisting our members meet their colleagues at these important events.
For more information about the LMDA Grants listed here or any item mentioned in this release, contact Shelley Orr, Vice President of Communications for LMDA:
For more information about Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas, visit our website at http://www.lmda.org/ or contact our administrative office:
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