Leora Morris Receives Dramaturgy Driven Grant

The Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas (LMDA) is pleased to announce the recipient of the Fall 2011 round of Dramaturg Driven Grants: Leora Morris. This round of grants saw six applications, and the selection process was overseen by LMDA’s Vice-President of Programs, Stephen Colella, along with committee members Kristin Leahey and Rachel Ditor.

Dramaturg Leora Morris will research and program the first six-play season of a new reading series she is spearheading as part of her ongoing artistic relationship with Small Wooden Shoe Theatre Company.  Spread over the course of a year, "Small Wooden Shoe Reads Difficult Plays and Sings Simple Songs" will bring people together to see a “difficult” play read aloud for a single evening once every two months.  Difficult does not mean boring, impenetrable, or obscure for obscurity’s sake.  Rather, the company hopes to create a kind of “counter-canon”: a selection of plays from a wide range of sources (ancient to contemporary) that are worth looking at alongside the “successful” ones that have survived the ages and been produced over and over again. Small Wooden Shoe believes that staged readings are a viable form of theatre itself, and that there are plays that can be served by reading them at music stands - in this case, those plays that do not necessarily have lasting commercial value but that might have tremendous value for one single night.  This might be Heiner Muller, or one of the medieval cycle plays ... an abandoned Joanna Baillie play, or one by James Rainey.  It is part of Small Wooden Shoe’s commitment to using performance to bring people together, to build a social community in a direct, honest, genial, and entertaining way.

For more info on the Dramaturg Driven Grant, click HERE.

Photo: Brendan Healey, David Fox, Maria Popoff, and Leora Morris (In a clockwise circle from the left) at the public reading of Galileo, the inspiration for the reading series. Photo taken by Erika Jacobs.