Past
Grantees

The TEXTILE CENTER OF MINNESOTA, Minneapolis, Minnesota, received $14,000 to support 2003-04 programs and services for emerging Minnesota fiber artists. The mission of the Center, a coalition of the textile community in the state, is to promote excellence in fiber arts and preserve textile traditions. It represents artists working in all forms including weaving, quilting, knitting, sewing, needlework, lace making, basketry, and beading. During the 2003-04 program year, the Center will mount seven exhibitions, five of which specifically serve emerging Minnesota textile artists. Jerome funding is also directed toward high-end professional workshops that advance the skills, artistry and career development of artists. The textile shop, operating on a consignment basis, will receive increased marketing attention in the coming year. A textile dye lab offers emerging artists access to state-of-the-art dye equipment and ample work space for large-scale projects.

THEATRE COMMUNICATIONS GROUP, New York City, received a grant of $12,000 in support of the National Theatre Criticism/Affiliated Writers Program. Theatre Communications Group strengthens, nurtures and promotes the professional not-for-profit American theatre. It offers a wide variety of programs and services, one of which is American Theatre magazine, the only national general circulation periodical reporting on the field. American Theatre offers an outlet for serious criticism as well as cultural journalism. Its published ten times per year with a readership of nearly 75,000. In 1989, with support from Jerome Foundation, Theatre Communications Group launched the National Theatre Criticism/Affiliated Writers Program, designed to help young critics from Minnesota and New York City develop careers in arts journalism. This program has enabled the magazine to greatly expand its coverage while simultaneously developing a new generation of cultural reporters and critics who have the depth of experience and breadth of perspective to stimulate critical thought and lively debate on contemporary American theatre in its historical, social and cultural contexts. Each year, critics are invited to apply for this program and are juried by a panel of experienced professionals in the field. In 2003-04, this program will support two resident critics who will receive stipends, travel and per diem support, strong editorial consultation and the opportunity to publish work in American Theatre.

JANE JEONG TRENKA, a writer and teacher will travel for four months in Korea, attending the Inje Institute for International Human Resources in the city of Kimhae, Kyungham Province, Republic of Korea. This is an intensive cultural education program for adult Korean adoptees. She will live the language and culture of Korea. As a memoirist, her main concern is trans-racial/cultural/national adoption. She is exploring in her second book in progress the themes of exile, Diaspora, language, culture, identity, family, and home.

TROIKA RANCH, Brooklyn, New York, received a grant of $8,000 in support of the creation and development of new work. Troika Ranchs Directors, choreographer Dawn Stoppiello and composer Mark Coniglio, create works that fuse dance, music and theater with digital computer technology. They use custom built sensory systems worn on the bodies of performers or placed in the stage space, which allow the performers movements and vocalizations to manipulate video, sound, light and robotic set pieces in real time. Jerome funding will support the development of Surfaces, a work based on the notion that a surface is a point of contact and conflict, whether the surface of a body, a surface that delineates space, or one that separates the public and private parts of our selves. Troika Ranch will fuse two distinct movement vocabularies for each of the dancers, depicting inner and outer selves, with a schizophrenic third vocabulary.

THE SOUTHERN THEATER, Minneapolis, Minnesota, acting as fiscal agent for choreographer URI SANDS, received a conditional grant of $8,000 in support of the development and production of a concert of new work. Sands will create work that showcases and celebrates both the diversities and similarities of dance found in the Twin Cities area. Hell incorporate ballet, jazz, contemporary and break dance in three new works. The overarching concept is dance that addresses the body, mind and spirit.

VOCALESSENCE, Minneapolis, Minnesota, received $22,000 in support of the 2004 Essentially Choral program. VocalEssence explores the interaction of voices and instruments through the innovative programming of music, with a focus on commissioned and first performances of music as well as important, but rarely heard, works of the past. Under the direction of conductor Philip Brunelle, Essentially Choral serves emerging composers interested in writing for vocal ensembles with instrumental accompaniment. An open call for score submissions for a 26-voice ensemble with up to 15 instrumentalists is issued by VocalEssence and the American Composers Forum. Selected composers hear their scores rehearsed by the VocalEssence Ensemble Singers, and performed in a public reading session. Essentially Choral also includes one-on-one mentoring sessions for the composers, conductor Brunelle, and a senior composer mentor. At his discretion, the conductor may offer commissions to select composers to fully develop work for presentation by VocalEssence.

VOICE & VISION, New York City, received a two-year grant of $27,000 in support of the ENVISION Retreat and Lab Program. Voice & Vision operates development and production programs engaging emerging female artists of all cultures and backgrounds. The ENVISION program begins with a Retreat each summer, followed in the fall by the Lab, a series of workshops designed to further the work of the emerging artists who participated in the summer retreat. The vast majority of these creators are New York City residents. Each theatrical piece is approached in an individual manner to ascertain what resources the creative teams need to allow their works to reach the next stage of development.

Writer and journalist CATHERINE WATSON will spend five weeks in London, England, and its suburbs, to complete research for an historical travel memoir about Sarah English. The main character was an impoverished sailor's wife who stole seven yards of cloth in 1744, pawned it to buy a spinning wheel, and was caught, tried and sentenced to seven years' hard labor in the tobacco fields of Virginia. She was one of 53,000 convicts England shipped to its colonies. By conservative estimate, at least 2 million of today's Americans, including Watson, descend from these transported convicts. Watson has a first draft of this work. In order to finish, she must travel to London to conduct interviews with English's descendents, the compiler of the complete list of British convicts transported to the American colonies, and curators at the Museum of London and the Victoria and Albert Museum. Shell consult several repositories including the Greater London Public Records Office, the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, and parish records at St. Dunstan Church.

Jerome Foundation Directors authorized a grant of $22,000 to the WOMEN'S PROJECT & PRODUCTIONS, New York City, in support of the participation of emerging playwrights in the Developmental Theatre Program, encompassing the Playwrights Lab, the Directors Forum, commissions workshops, First Looks readings, the publication of anthologies and the hosting of post performance discussions. The Women's Project is dedicated to the development and production of new plays written by women. Jerome dollars are specifically directed toward the participation of emerging playwrights in the Playwrights Lab, the commissioning program, and First Looks readings. The Playwrights Lab meets every two weeks from September to May and engages 19 to 21 members each year. The First Looks rehearsed reading series features 15 to 20 scripts per season.

The Foundation's Directors approved a two-year grant of $30,000 to THE WRITERS ROOM, New York City, to subsidize members' fees and offer services to emerging writers. Now in its 25th year, The Writers Room is dedicated to the purpose of providing writers with clean, quiet and affordable work space, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. Writers have access to work stations, a library, the Internet, typewriters, and common space for discussion, directly addressing the need writers have for a space of their own in which to work, free from real distractions. Each year, The Writers Room serves approximately 400 emerging and established writers of all literary genres.

Funding was awarded to JADE WU for In Search of Golden Phoenix: The Invisible Legacy, a documentary that begins with a personal tale about domestic abuse and expands into a global legacy of wartime abuse in correlation to the rise and definition of domestic abuse in Asian and Asian American culture.

MARCUS YOUNG, Minneapolis, MN, was awarded funding for Thoughts #1 & Thoughts #2, two experimental shorts that portray the filmmakers quiet reflections on his place in a society of cumulative violence and recent war. Amidst a myriad internal struggles, the filmmaker poses the personal inquiries of how to be a good personhow to be a working, multi-cultural, positively out, not-so-young, spirit-filled, contributing citizen-artist in an isolating society.

Experimental filmmaker and arts administrator MARCUS YOUNG will spend three months in Bejing, China, to work with accomplished Chinese composer Chen Qian to finish the soundtrack for an experimental documentary titled Study: Bejing Building. Qians background in military music will be greatly beneficial to Youngs documentary. He envisions its soundtrack as consisting primarily of percussive instrumental compositions.

ZEITGEIST, St. Paul, Minnesota, received a two-year grant of $27,000 in support of the Emerging Composer Workshop. Zeitgeist strives to forge new links between musicians and music lovers through concerts, commissions, recordings, and dialogues with its audiences. Its dedicated to the music of the last 20 years. The Emerging Composer Workshop is designed to give composers opportunities to develop creative ideas and stretch artistic boundaries in an environment that celebrates exploration and experimentation. The focus is not on the completion of a composition, but rather on the generation and development of ideas. Each composer brings sketches and material under development and uses Zeitgeist as a compositional laboratory, working with the ensemble for two hours every day for five days. The remainder of each working day is spent composing new material and attending the working sessions of other composers participating in the Workshop. There are two open rehearsals of the pieces for the public.

15 HEAD-A THEATRE LAB, Minneapolis, Minnesota, received a two-year grant of $36,000 in support of the creation and production of new work. 15 HEAD uses a collaborative creative process to produce plays, operas and music-theater works marked by highly physical performances and unique visual styles. Using material about the wives of Henry VIII, 15 HEAD will examine the concept of celebrity, both historically and in the present, in The VI Wives of Henry VIII. The company will also work on The Enchanted, a script by Jean Giraudoux. In the second season covered by this grant, 15 HEAD will produce Sacred Space, a series of meditations on sacred space created in response to visual images and musical selections. Finally, the company will explore the life of artist Amedeo Modigliani in a work that focuses on his romance with Jeanne Hebuterne as well as his philosophies on art and his reputation as a starving artist.

3-LEGGED DOG MEDIA AND THEATER GROUP, New York City, received a two-year concluding grant of $30,000 in support of the creation of new work. 3-Legged Dog produces original, experimental works in theater, performance, media, and hybrid forms. It explores the new narrative possibilities created by digital technology, examines the braided realities of language and structure, and provides an environment for its artists to create tools and modes of expression. Jerome funds will be used for the creation, production, and touring of two new productions, Wonton Destruction by Jill Szuchmacher and Quiver by Sophie Haviland, both company members. The first is an exploration of the frailty of existence and the tense relationship between technology and meaning; the second is a meditation on longing and spiritual transformation.

The AMERICAN COMPOSERS ORCHESTRA, New York City, received $15,000 in support of the participation of New York City and Minnesota emerging composers in the Emerging Composers Project. This Orchestra has been a catalyst for the development of new American symphonic music since its founding 25 years ago. Established by composers for composers, its mission is to discover, produce and present the widest possible spectrum of contemporary orchestral music. The Emerging Composers Project consists of six programmatic components: New Music Reading Sessions and Commission Award, Emerging Composer Fellowships, Commissions, Carnegie Hall Performances, Composers Out Front series and Touring Performances, and the Open Review Program.

AMERICAN OPERA PROJECTS, Brooklyn, New York, received $18,000 to support the First Chance program. American Opera Projects develops, nurtures and produces new American operas and innovative opera projects. It commissions new works from librettists and composers, presents those in workshops, and provides strategically chosen venues for premieres. The First Chance Program provides for composers and librettists, especially those creating opera for the first time, the experience of hearing their works performed by strong casts under skilled directors.

THE SOUTHERN THEATER FOUNDATION, Minneapolis, Minnesota, acting as fiscal agent for ARENA DANCES, received $12,000 in support of the development and production of new work by choreographer Mathew Janczewski. Funds will be used for the development of Bankrupt City Ballad, an ensemble piece based on imagery from the Great Depression. The dance will juxtapose the desperation of poverty with the gaiety and spectacle of dance marathons, or dance derbies, in the 1920s and 1930s. Janczewski will also be working on a new duet, with the working title of Open Eyes, a work that will focus on breath, groundedness and simplicity.

A two-year grant of $40,000 was awarded to THE ASIAN AMERICAN WRITERS WORKSHOP, New York City, to support writing workshops, a journal and a Poetry Mentoring Project. The Workshop supports the creation, development, publication and dissemination of literature by Asians living in America. Its programs include an in-house reading series, a national literary caravan of writers who tour and read, a literary magazine, the Asian Pacific American Journal of poetry and prose, the publication of anthologies and single author books, and workshops, among other activities. During the two years covered by the grant, the Workshop expects to offer 32 workshops serving approximately 350 emerging artists in multiple genres including playwriting, fiction, poetry, performance and short story. The organization hopes to launch a Mentorship program, and may also use Jerome dollars toward the publication of the Asian Pacific American Journal, which includes work by emerging writers.