Spring 2018 Travel Grant Recipients

< Back

jose e abad (San Francisco, CA) will travel to the former home of influential author James Baldwin to convene with award-winning fiction writer and activist Shannon Cain (Saint-Paul-De-Vence, France). In a 10-day residency, the two will visit significant sites, meet with community partners, and identify opportunities for artistic interventions to commemorate the legacy of Baldwin.

L.M. Bogad (Berkeley, CA) will collaborate with Mondo Bizarro (New Orleans, LA) to stage an updated version of COINTELSHOW: A PATRIOT ACT. Together they will engage in an ensemble-based process to update the script and adapt it to the specific context of New Orleans.

Susanna Brock (New York, NY) will participate in the rehearsal process of The Onion Theatre Project, a devised play and community-building project directed by Taiwo Afolabi (Victoria City, British Columbia, Canada) for newcomer youth. Through active participation, observation, discussion and interviews, Brock will learn about Afolabi’s methods for engaging an immigrant youth population in theater performance and community building.

Taiga Christie (New Haven, CT) will build creative partnerships with Amani People’s Theater (Nairobi, Kenya) and Mutual Aid Disaster Relief (Tampa, FL) to develop written and performance-based training materials that address vicarious trauma in disaster responders. Christie will begin this work by studying performance-based techniques for trauma healing in Kenya, then continue via an interview process with MADR partner Rosehip Medic Collective (Portland, OR) and with disaster responders in Southern Vermont (where she was a first responder during the Hurricane Irene recovery). The work will fuel a new project by Faultline Ensemble.

Ezzell Floranina of ETTA International - The Rainbow Players (Shutesbury, MA) will meet with Arts Access Aotearoa (Wellington, New Zealand) to learn how New Zealand’s nationwide practices and policies in universal access and inclusion affect the outlook of artists with labels of disability, both as consumers and as creative and performing artists.

The Department of Theater and Dance at Indiana University of Pennsylvania(Indiana, PA) will establish a new relationship between Teatro Luna (Chicago, IL) and the IUP-based ensemble Theater-by-the-Grove via teaching artist Alex Meda (of Teatro Luna) and faculty member Rachel DeSoto-Jackson (of IUP/Theater-by-the-Grove). During the course of Teatro Luna’s two-week residency at IUP, they will compare practices of embodied investigation by exploring methods for ensemble-building across geographic locales, and will develop fragments of work intended to engage participants in themes that are relevant to people of color and non-dominant gender identification. 

LEIMAY (Brooklyn, NY) ensemble members Andrea Jones and Derek DiMartini, and its directors Ximena Garnica and Shige Moriya, will learn pedagogical practices from the Compañía del Cuerpo de Indias (Cartagena, Colombia) and its school Colegio del Cuerpo. Simultaneously, LEIMAY will share some basic principles of the LEIMAY LUDUS practice with the members of Compañía del Cuerpo de Indias and selected students from their school.

Radical Evolution (Brooklyn, NY) co-founders Meropi Peponides and Beto O’Byrne will spend 10 days in residence at Black Box Okhla (New Delhi, India). While in residence, they will develop an exchange between the two companies, share and discuss cultural and artistic practices, and explore the possibility of collaborating on a new work.

Carlos Sirah (Charleston, MS) will collaborate with the Delta Cultural Center (Helena, AR) on the creation of Black ‘n da Blues: Stories and Songs from the Arkansas Delta 1919-2019. The project is the first of six residencies exploring the relationship of Phillips County musicians with historic and economic legacies of race and musical artistic production in Phillips County, within the state of Arkansas, nationally, and beyond.

Ross Travis (San Francisco, CA) will meet with master theatre teacher and clown Ronlin Foreman (Powells Crossroads, TN) to engage in research and dialogue on bouffon, create characters for a new show called Tempting Fate (Working Title), and set groundwork for a further working relationship on this project.

Theater Grottesco (Santa Fe, NM) will invite Lisa Fay and Jeff Glassman Duo (Urbana-Champaign, IL) to teach their ensemble three techniques that are necessary for the experimental composition QUARTET. Glassman and Fay will guide the ensemble for three weeks, putting their techniques into practice and creating the first four-person application of their form in a full composition. QUARTET will premiere in Santa Fe alongside public workshops for local performers and students.

The peer panelists for the 2018 NET/TEN Travel Grants included: Soneela Nankani, Managing Director, Center for Performance and Civic Practice & Sojourn Theatre (Brooklyn, NY); Daniel Pruksarnukul, Creative Producer, Mondo Bizarro (New Orleans, LA); and Selene Santiago, Arts Administrator & Cultural Curator (Los Angeles, CA).