NEW YORK CITY: Theatre Communications Group (TCG) has announced the recipients of the second round of Audience (R)Evolution Travel Grants. Funded by the Doris Duke Charitable Fund (DDCF), the program will award up to $7,500 to sixteen teams of TCG member theatre staff and community stakeholders.
The funds will support audience engagement programs and strategies for theatres to deepen relationships with the communities they serve. To date, the program has distributed more than $2 million in grants to 40 projects in 20 states across the country. This year’s selection panel included Susie Falk, managing director of California Shakespeare Theater; Joanne Seelig, director of education at Imagination Stage; and Michael Develle Winn, community engagement manager at Alliance Theatre.
“From connecting with Deaf and Latinx audiences, from reaching Middle Eastern and Muslim communities to refugees and those in addiction recovery, these Audience (R)Evolution grantees are bridging differences in a time of division,” said TCG executive director Teresa Eyring in a statement. “Thanks to our long-standing partnership with the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, these Travel Grants will empower the peer-driven exchange of innovative audience-engagement models that build community and dialogue.”
The second cycle of Audience (R)Evolution Travel Grants will award $114,470 in total funds to the following theatres:
The 5th Avenue Theatre in Seattle Avenue’s planned production of Hunchback of Notre Dame (June 2018), which will feature a deaf actor in the lead role.
24th Street Theatre of Los Angeles will send a team to the Children’s Theatre Company in Minneapolis and the Oregon Children’s Theatre to learn first-hand strategies to increase audience engagement and attendance in the of Houston’s staff members from the company’s education and community engagement and general management department will visit the Community Animation and Social Innovation Centre (CASIC).
New York City’s Atlantic Theater Company will send associate artistic director Annie MacRae, director of marketing Claire Graves, and manager of institutional giving Nick Luckenbaugh to London nonprofit institution operating in a large city with similar populations and potential theatregoing audiences to that of London.
Staff members of the Children’s Theatre Company in Minneapolis will travel to Washington, D.C. to observe audience engagement strategies at Imagination Stage, Center Stage, model of artistic engagement with local Latinx artists (Teatro Publico de Cleveland), with the goal of establishing a self-led, local ensemble of Arab-Americans and Middle Eastern artists who will create and perform at Cleveland Public Theatre.
San Francisco’s Golden Thread Productions of New Haven, Conn., will connect managing director Joshua Borenstein, community and engagement manager Elizabeth Nearing, and Will Kneerim, director of employment and education for integrated refugee and immigrant services, to Seattle Rep and Arena Stage to observe, research, and experience the company of Minneapolis will send key staff and personnel to visit ArtsEmerson in Boston. in Skokie, Ill.,.
New York City’s Ping Chong & Company in Washington, D.C.,.
Denver’s Su Teatro will send staff to Los Angeles Theater Center/Latino Theater Company in Los Angeles, Teatro Pregones/Puerto Rican Traveling Theater in New York City, and Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland of Providence, R.I., will build on their two-year relationship with Rhode Island Latino Arts by sending staff, artists, and board members of both companies to visit two organizations creating theatre at the intersection of Latinx and non-culturally specific work: Cleveland’s Cleveland Public Theatre/Teatro Público de Cleveland, and Borderlands Theater Company in Tucson, Ariz. Their travels will explore engagement between produced performances, producers, and artists to better understand the organizational structures surrounding the work, which will assist the two organizations in developing a future model for their collaboration.
Two River Theater Company in Red Bank, N.J., will send artistic director John Dias, director of marketing Courtney Schroeder, education assistant Amanda Espinoza, and community relations officer Gilda Rogers to visit Oregon Shakespeare Festival (OSF) and Borderlands Theater with the goal of further developing Two River’s Latinx audience and building a long-term dialogue between theatre.
, in a statement. “There is no better way to garner such high-quality knowledge than through these on-site, real-life conversations. The tools and ideas that the participating theatres exchange will ultimately support the field at large by enriching the theatre-going experiences of audiences nationwide.”