Theater, Trustee Grants
| Ensemble Studio Theatre New York, NY 10019 |
$1,524,430 |
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| Ensemble Studio Theatre (EST) is recognized as a leading developmental theater company in the United States and their embrace of science and technology as playwriting themes has had a significant impact on the national theater scene. This renewal grant will enable EST to build and expand on its program of creating plays about science and technology. EST is a center of innovation, commissioning, workshopping, reading, rehearsing, and producing dozens of new works each year. It has developed a successful program of coordinating with regional theaters across the country. In 2003, the EST/Sloan main stage production featured Cynthia Nixon of Sex and the City in String Fever, which broke box office records and received outstanding reviews. EST has successfully enlisted support from the scientific community, inviting many scientists and engineers to join their play-reading and advisory committees and holding events at the Rockefeller University, the City University of New York, the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, and at Los Alamos. The new grant includes one $20,000 commission a year to attract to the science/technology theme a major playwright like John Guare, Wendy Wasserstein, or David Mamet, all of whom have been produced at EST. The grant also includes funds to reflect the real costs of the mainstage production and for a dedicated press representative. A new initiative is a $55,000 production enhancement grant awarded to a major regional theater that agrees to produce the EST mainstage play during the same year. This would ensure a longer life and bigger audiences for the annual production, which now runs for three weeks, and also increase visibility for the play and the EST/Sloan theater program. Project Director: Curt Dempster, Founder and Artistic Director. | |
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| Magic Theatre San Francisco, CA 94123 |
$396,800 |
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| This grant funds a three-year effort by the Magic Theatre to commission, develop, and present new plays about science and technology. The core of the project is five new annual playwright commissions at the Magic Theatre, as well as three commissions a year to West Coast partner theaters, resulting in a total of twenty-four playwright commissions over the three-year period. There will also be three staged readings a year, each followed by discussion as part of the Science on Stage program with the San Francisco Exploratorium. The Magic Theatre will also host five readings and one major workshop production each year for a promising new play. A national conference, two local conferences, and readings at Stanford University's National New Play Center will be held. Beginning with the second year, the grant supports an annual world premiere production of a Foundation-supported play on science and technology. Project Director: Chris Smith, Artistic Director. | |
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