Fall 2019 Travel Grant Recipients

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Cornerstone Theater Company (Los Angeles, CA) will host four artists from Stut Theater (Utrecht, NL) for 14 days in January 2020, building on a partnership with that was instigated in 2017. The visiting artists will join Cornerstone and a group of formerly incarcerated Angelenos to creatively explore themes of lost and found identity. Together they'll devise and present a 20-minute performance using Cornerstone’s methodology. A public sharing will include artist/audience engagement and conversation.

fidget (Philadelphia, PA) will spend a week in France centered on research toward a new work, Invoquer des foules, with D.E.A.D. Company and Cie X-Trem Fusion (both of Rennes, France). The piece is a dance/music collaboration that mashes up hip-hop, contemporary dance, and African diasporic dance practices, with original electronic music. Participants share a background in improvisation; the companies will lean in to uncovering their differences in aesthetics, style, and approach.

Free Street Theater (Chicago, IL) staff will travel to Puerto Rico for one week to exchange ideas and practices while exploring the possibility of a collaboration and creative partnership with Jóvenes del 98 (San Juan, PR). This exploration will include observing rehearsals, participating in workshops, and offering active dialogues and other Free Street techniques. Together, the companies will determine the project’s next steps: outline goals and timelines; plan fundraising efforts; and consider the context of their own schedules and staff capacity.

Goat in the Road Productions (New Orleans, LA) and The Walter Anderson Museum of Art (Ocean Springs, MS) are embarking on a multi-year project that will involve an in-depth collaboration. The project will culminate in an immersive play based on the life and work of the South’s most elusive artist, Walter Inglis Anderson, and surrounding community activities in Fall 2021.

Joan Lipkin (St. Louis, MO) will travel to Eastern Europe to meet with potential new partners for upcoming projects. Long-standing partners of four years, Civil Rights Defenders and Belgrade Pride (Belgrade, Serbia), will assist in making introductions and facilitating meetings with non-governmental organizations and individuals that work with LGBT+ communities in Eastern Europe.

Alleluia Panis (San Francisco, CA) and ensemble members of Alleluia Panis Dance Theatre will travel to the Philippines to work with Carlo Ebeo (Kiangan Banue, Tugaya Lanao del Sur). Their convening will include an exploration of indigenous Pilipinx dances and ritual work in preparation for their project Lakbai Diwa, which will premiere in San Francisco in October 2020.

Theater Mitu (Brooklyn, NY) will bring playwright, actress, and teacher Dima Matta (Beirut, Lebanon) to Brooklyn from Beirut in the spring of 2020 to develop her new play This is not a memorized script, this is a well-rehearsed story in collaboration with Mitu’s founding artistic director Rubén Polendo. As part of Theater Mitu’s Expansion Works Program, Dima will also lead a series of storytelling workshops for the LGBTQ+ community.

Elle Thoni (Minneapolis, MN) will initiate and strengthen relationships with fellow Midwest organizers working at the intersection of art and re-wilding, as they visit and map urban green spaces in Detroit to explore a possible tour of the ensemble-based outdoor musical Queen B. During a five-day trip to Detroit with company member Commarrah Jewelia Bashar, they will meet, share food, and build community with Ollie Dodt, Sam Moltmaker, and Antonio Rafael (all of Detroit, MI); visit local green spaces; and connect with the people who steward them.

Urban Bush Women (Brooklyn, NY) will initiate the final development and planning phase for the UBW BOLD “Workshop for Embodied Practice of Examining Whiteness,” a community-based workshop for people who identify as white to explore whiteness and anti-racist organizing values through movement. Planning will take place during a four-day meeting of UBW and trainers from the People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond (multiple locations across the US).

The VORTEX (Austin, TX) will host Tiffany Johnson, Producing Artistic Director of Pyramid Theatre Company(Des Moines, IA) to expand their budding relationship. Johnson will work with The VORTEX staff to begin planning a performance pipeline between Des Moines and Austin, building a concrete plan for an Iowa-Texas touring and exchange network.

The peer panelists for the Fall 2019 NET/TEN Travel Grants included: Kevin Becerra of ArtsEmerson, Nicolas Benacerraf of The Assembly, and Corinne Woods of A.R.T./New York.