2016 - 2017 Exchange Grant Recipients

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Borderlands Theater (Tucson, AZ) will partner with Spoken Futures (Tucson, AZ) and the University of Arizona, Mexican American Studies Department (Tucson, AZ) to produce an immersive walking tour showcasing the history and heritage of Tucson’s historic Barrio Anita. Archival research and intergenerational oral histories from Barrio Anita elders, current residents, and youth will be transformed into multi-media video projections, spoken word performances, shadow puppetry, and reenactments.

Double Edge Theatre (Ashfield, MA) and The Hinterlands (Detroit, MI) will convene a national consortium of ensemble-based training companies including Q-Staff, Mondo Bizarro, Charlestown Working Theatre, and SITI Company. This convening aims to explore strengths, challenges, and best practices unique to the operation of an ensemble theatre, with the intention of field-wide impact.

Junebug Productions (New Orleans, LA) and Complex Movements (Detroit, MI) will host each other for exchanges centered around both companies’ work at the intersection of art and organizing. Complex Movements will share their cohort model touring structure, and Junebug Productions will share their story circle process. They aim to explore methodologies for engaging community and how touring can serve as a mobilizing and connective force for social justice.

Last Call (New Orleans, LA) and the LGBT Community Center of New Orleans will collaborate to collect oral histories from the New Orleans queer community and interpret those stories creatively through the creation of podcasts and community performances. This work will explore the role of storytelling and history preservation as a power-building methodology in this time of political divisiveness.

Lightning Rod Special (Philadelphia, PA) will partner with Barrymore-award-winning composer and music director Alex Bechtel (Philadelphia, PA) to create an ensemble-generated musical theater piece about the abortion debate in America. This partnership supports a mutual artistic exchange that stretches Bechtel creatively to make music collaboratively with devisers, while empowering and educating Lightning Rod Special in musical theater experimentation. 

The Performance Project’s First Generation Ensemble (Northhampton, MA)--comprised of youth (18-21) originating from Haiti, Burundi/Rwanda, Guinea, South Sudan and the United States--will present a workshop and perform tenderness, a multi-lingual physical theater piece at Tricklock Company’s Revolutions International Theater Festival (Albuquerque, NM). Tricklock Company members will offer artistic feedback and guidance to further develop the piece and explore effective communication in intergenerational work.

Pregones/Puerto Rican Travel Theater (Bronx, NY) will deepen a relationship with Alaska Native Heritage Center (Anchorage, AK) and continue a collaboration initially started in 2013 as part of the Arts Bridge program managed by Artspace (Minneapolis, MN). The new exchange will engage an intergenerational network of associate artists and community members in New York City and Anchorage in reciprocal travel and multi-discipline artmaking. The project aims to use telepresence not just as a tool, but also as a creative medium, and may feature live-streaming performance at the experimental workshop level.

TeAda Productions (Los Angeles, CA), in partnership with Portland’s Immigrant and Refugee Community Organization (Portland, OR) and the Multnomah County Library(Portland, OR), will conduct a residency series to create a theater project fostering understanding, compassion, and communication between Oregon's established communities and its growing refugee communities.

The Object Group (Decatur, GA) and 7 Stages (Atlanta, GA) will collaborate to produce a multi-disciplinary opera adapted from Euripides' The Bacchae. Members of the ensemble will partner with composer and multi-instrumentalist performer Klimchak (Atlanta, GA) to complete a devised realization of the production featuring physical theatre, puppetry, mask work, dance, and an immersive sonic environment.

Theatre Nohgaku (New York, NY) will travel to Bloomsburg Theatre Ensemble (Bloomsburg, PA) for a week-long leadership retreat and rehearsal residency. Bloomsburg Theatre Ensemble will impart its 39-year history of shared leadership and operational challenges. Theatre Nohgaku will develop and perform a workshop presentation of GETTYSBURG, a new English Noh performance written and directed by Bloomsburg ensemble member Elizabeth Dowd.

The peer panelists for the 2016-17 NET/TEN Exchange Grants included: Gayle Fekete, Head of Dance, Department of Theatre and New Dance, California State University Pomona (Pasadena, CA); Chris Kaminstein, Co-Artistic Director, Goat in the Road (New Orleans, LA); Charlie Pepiton, Producing Artistic Director, Square Top Theatre / Asst. Professor of Theatre, Gonzaga University (Spokane, WA); Sam Moltmaker, Ensemble Member, A Host of People (Detroit, MI); Holly Sansom, General Manager, Honest Accomplice Theatre (New York, NY).