Fall 2015 Travel Grant Recipients

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Michelle Dahlenburg of Conspire Theatre (Austin, TX) will meet twice monthly with Alirio Zavarce (Adelaide, South Australia) via Skype to exchange and discuss their companies' methods of devising and play development. In the spring, Zavarce will visit Austin for two weeks to observe and lead workshops with Conspire’s ensemble as they develop their new play, Mothers & Daughters.

Judith Sloan of EarSay (Sunnyside, NY) will travel to Ellsworth Adult Education(Ellsworth, ME) to engage with literacy teachers and students. She will lead a workshop in interviewing and storytelling and explore the possibilities of a collaborative project.

Liza Bielby of The Hinterlands (Detroit, MI) will travel to Chengdu, China to meet with experimental Sichuan opera playwright Xu Fen to share working practices, reflect upon their recent translation process, and to discuss and set up a framework for ongoing digital cross-disciplinary and cross-language collaboration with Xu for a new production called Enemies of the State.

Tannis Kowalchuk of NACL Theatre (Highland Lake, NY) will travel to Atlanta, GA to meet with 7 Stages. The visit will include discussions and exchanges about both companies’ administrative and ensemble models, the balance between running a space while creating work, and how to function as both presenters and creators.

Jairo Cuesta and James Slowiak of New World Performance Laboratory (Akron, OH) will meet with Fundacion Varasanta Teatro (Bogota, Colombia) to share techniques in devising theatre events that concern indigenous populations of Colombia. These sessions will prepare Slowiak and Cuesta for a trip to the Amazon region to engage in dialogue with the Uitoto tribe concerning oral tradition, embodiment, and cultural reverberations of the exploitation by the rubber industry.

Orange Theatre (Phoenix, AZ) will invite Paul Pinto and Jeffrey Young of thingNY (New York, NY) to work with the seven members of their ensemble. Together they will explore how a theatre company and musical ensemble and can create new work collaboratively. The two ensembles will share methodologies, try out new exercises, and collaboratively create material around the theme of maps.

Ping Chong and Ryan Conarro of Ping Chong + Company (New York, NY) will travel to Anchorage, AK and to northwest Arctic communities to conduct interviews and documentary material about Alaskan identity and rural Arctic life. These engagements will become integral to a new devised work, Where the Sea Breaks Its Back.

Jerry Stropnicky (Danville, PA) will collaborate with Tonny Muwangala, a producer and onscreen news personality for Ugandan national television, to create learning materials based on Stropnicky’s recent work in Africa. The resulting video documentation, tool kits, and story responses from participants will be key in disseminating knowledge about the project and sharing Stropnicky’s community story-play methods to a wider community.

The Talking Band (New York, NY) will gather committed and potential producing partners from around the nation at Virginia Tech University to develop The Marcellus Shale Project. The project engages communities affected by fracking and energy development through locally produced performances of the company’s play Marcellus Shale. The visit will also include a cross-community conversation facilitated by the online arts archival site VTArtWorks.

Under the Table (Brooklyn, NY/Oakland, CA) will travel to the University of Idaho (Moscow, ID) to work with Professor Matt Foss on a new, in-progress physical comedy inspired by heists, both real-life and fictional. Foss will share his expertise in creating simple yet innovative visual moments and worlds.

Heather Barfield of The VORTEX (Austin, TX) will travel to New York City to meet with Dylan James Amick and Julia Katz of Critical Point Theatre. During their time together they will investigate internet security protocols, CCTV, livestreaming, and hacking for implementation in mutual upcoming theatrical productions titled Privacy Settings: A Promethean Tale.

The NET/TEN 2015 Fall Travel Grant peer review panel included: Stanlyn Brevé, Director of National Programs, National Performance Network / Visual Artists Network (New Orleans, LA); Rebecca Dunning, Managing Director, Honolulu Theatre for Youth (Honolulu, HI); Godfrey L. Simmons, Jr., Artistic Director, Civic Ensemble & NET Board Member (Ithaca, NY).