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Education at NYTW: Artist Development
Artists of Color Fellowships 2008/09
Calls for Applications: Biographies of Current 2007/08 Fellows In 1995, NYTW launched its Emerging Artists of Color Fellowship program, awarding fellowships to promising young theatre artists of color in order to help them develop their crafts while utilizing the resources of a distinguished theatre company. Building on the success of the Emerging Artists program, NYTW initiated its Resident Artists of Color Fellowships in 1999, offering an intensive professional development experience for more established young theatre artists and arts administrators. NYTW maintains its relationships with fellowship alumni by keeping them informed of artistic opportunities in our community, involving them in the induction of new Fellows during Summer Residencies, and, for those with experience as educators, employing them as teaching artists in Learning Workshop, NYTW’s youth education program. NYTW’s Artists of Color Fellowship programs aim to: •
Provide opportunities for emerging and advancing theatre practitioners
to observe and discuss new work All of NYTW’s fellowships are designed to meet the specific needs and goals of each Fellow. Fellows meet regularly with the NYTW Fellowship Coordinator, both individually and as a group, and our staff organizes occasional outings where Fellows and staff members attend performances and cultural events together, including out-of-town and international destinations. NYTW places calls for applications in publications such as ARTSEARCH and Playbill Online, and advertises fellowships nationally through outreach to colleges, university MFA programs, nonprofit theatre companies, regional theatre groups, and industry journals. Additionally, program and application information is sent to Theatre Communications Group member theatres that specialize in producing the work of artists of color, A.R.T./NY member theatres, and theatre service organizations such as HOLA (Hispanic Organization of Latin Artists), Black Theatre Network, Asian American Arts Alliance, and the Non-Traditional Casting Project. Applications are reviewed by NYTW’s Artistic staff and current and former Fellows. Emerging Artists of Color Fellows The Emerging Artists of Color Fellowship program grew out of NYTW’s fundamental belief that a diversity of thought, experience, and culture is crucial to continued theatrical innovation, and now boasts over 40 fellowship alumni. Through artistic events and Summer Residencies, Emerging Artists of Color Fellows are welcomed into a network of artists with whom they can collaborate, and provided a $4,000 stipend that enables them to devote time to their talents. Fellows may avail themselves of rehearsal space, office facilities and equipment, casting assistance, mentoring, and other forms of support. NYTW aims to award 4-5 fellowships per year in a range of disciplines including directing, playwriting, and design. For the 2007/08 Season, we’ve awarded two new $8,000 Emerging Arts Management Fellowships whose recipients will collaborate with NYTW’s Development, General Management, and Marketing departments on special projects including audience development, Board development, and corporate sponsorship initiatives. Resident Artists of Color Fellows Resident fellowships last for two years, with the recipients hired as full-time NYTW staff at an annual salary of $26,000, with full benefits. Each Fellow focuses on one particular interest area, such as casting, literary management, company management, or stage management, and the professional immersion provides a comprehensive experience of NYTW’s artistic and operational model. Resident fellowships were created to redress the lack of people of color in high-level artistic management positions throughout the country. The NYTW Artistic staff initially sought to bring early career directors into the organization to work full-time alongside staff members in order to encourage the development of young artistic directors of color. Granting young artists opportunities for total participation in NYTW’s day-to-day creative work gives them a distinct advantage in identifying and pursuing career goals, and beyond gaining broad exposure to the art and business of theatre, Fellows experience the unconventional methods and artistic values of NYTW through their work with a variety of theatre professionals from NYTW’s staff and its community of associate artists. NYTW currently is hosting a 2006-08 Resident Fellow in Stage Management named Niki Spruill. In her first year with the Workshop, Niki served as a Production Assistant and Production Stage Manager on KAOS and All the Wrong Reasons, respectively, and in her second year, she is continuing to serve as either an Assistant Stage Manager or Production Stage Manager for our Summer Residencies and selected 2007/08 Season productions. In order to enable Niki’s assumption of these roles, NYTW paid her Equity initiation fee. For 2007-09, NYTW has created a new Resident fellowship called the Creative Residency, and the first recipient is playwright Jorge Ignacio Cortiñas, who formerly held an Emerging Artists of Color Fellowship in 2003/04. Jorge will pursue a new writing project with support from our Artistic department, and serve as a teaching artist in NYTW’s Learning Workshop youth education program.
During the 2005/06 Season, NYTW launched Suspects Abroad, its cultural exchange initiative. This program supports distinctive opportunities for NYTW's community of artists, the Usual Suspects, to travel with small groups of their colleagues to theatre festivals around the world, providing an immersion experience in some of the world's most vibrant contemporary arts communities. The Suspects Abroad pilot program was designed to elevate the activities of the Usual Suspects, provide an infusion of new theatrical ideas and techniques into American theatre, and create opportunities for multidimensional artistic growth. Usual Suspects have traveled to the Theatertreffen in Berlin, Germany, the Dialog Festival in Wroclaw, Poland, the Golden Mask Festival in Moscow, Russia, and the Hungarian Theatre Museum and Institute in Budapest, Hungary. Most recently, in March 2007, Suspects traveled to the Baltic region to see performances in St. Petersburg, Russia, Riga, Latvia, and Vilnius, Lithuania. NYTW Artistic Director Jim Nicola and Associate Artistic Director Linda Chapman select participating Usual Suspects based on in-depth assessments of those artists who are most likely to benefit from the experience and whose subsequent work will enhance the theatrical landscape. Participants ultimately submit final reports describing the travel’s impact on their perspectives and careers. Here’s a sampling of reflections from Baltic trip participants: Of her experiences, Kia Corthron (playwright of Light Raise the Roof in NYTW’s 2003/04 Season) wrote, “Brilliant actors all around, but in Russia the work was intense, belabored. By contrast in Riga, Alvis Hermanis’ stunning Latvian Love (which leapt the language barrier to bring me to tears, a feat accomplished so rarely in my life) was performed with such easy insouciant grace. I felt similarly about the 101 actors comfortably moving about the Vilnius stage, dazing and delighting us American theatre-goers in Dalia Ibelhauptaite’s La Bohème.” On seeing Hermanis’ Latvian Love, Betty Shamieh (playwright of The Black Eyed, the second production of NYTW’s 2007/08 Season) reported, “Because I really responded viscerally to that work, I believe that the biggest surprise and the most important observation that I will take away from the experience of seeing that show was how much can be conveyed without words. I think this is a particularly important lesson for a playwright to learn, particularly if he or she is interested in the incorporation of dance and other non-verbal methods of communication in his or her work. I realized I learned a great deal about myself as an audience member by being able to compare my reactions to the various performances we saw with the reactions of the other members of our group.” Playwright Said Sayrafiezdah (two-time former NYTW Fellow and mentor at Vassar’s 2007 Summer Residency) wrote: “The prospect of being able to experience Russian theatre was irresistible. I should add that I am currently working on a memoir about growing up in the United States with parents who belonged to the Trotskyite organization, the Socialist Workers Party. Since most everything we saw was without translation, I was able to see how it’s possible to tell a clear story even in a foreign language. I’ve also had almost no experience with opera. Seeing La Bohème and The Valkyries helped open up a new world for me.”
Summer Residencies NYTW’s Summer Residencies bring together groups of Fellows, artists, and students for meetings, mentoring, and project development, fostering a retreat environment where a stimluating exchange of ideas can happen at the dinner table as well as in the rehearsal room. Several developing projects are in residence concurrently, enabling artists of different backgrounds and disciplines to see and critique one another’s work, thus furthering the possibilities for cross-pollination and future collaboration. Residencies occur at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, NY for ten days in June and at Dartmouth College in Hanover, NH for three weeks in August, and welcome a total of over 80 artists each year. The NYTW Artistic staff uses a rigorous process to individually select resident artists, considering past work, professional goals, and compatibility with NYTW’s collaborative and experimental creative process. Recent participating artists have included Betty Shamieh (author of this season’s The Black Eyed at NYTW), Thaddeus Phillips (director/designer/performer of last season’s ¡El Conquistador! at NYTW), director Jo Bonney (Slanguage, The Seven, and last season’s All That I Will Ever Be at NYTW), and director and NYTW Artistic Associate Michael Greif (Rent and Cavedweller at NYTW). NYTW at Dartmouth College For the past fifteen years, NYTW has spent three weeks each summer in residence at Dartmouth College. Professional artists from all over the US and abroad are invited to come for one week at a time to work on projects in development and give public readings at the end of each week, far from the New York City critical establishment. The Theatre department at Dartmouth, in conjunction with the Hopkins Center for the Arts, supports these residencies with room, board, and work space. For the first time in the Dartmouth Residency’s history, one of our 2007 artists will participate for the entire three weeks. Elevator Repair Service, currently a NYTW company-in-residence, will continue to develop a project based on William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury that is slated for full production at NYTW in the spring of 2008. Dartmouth’s
Director of Theatre Peter Hackett works with the NYTW Artistic staff
to incorporate a group of matriculated students into the residency as
part of a summer quarter course offered for credit each year. The students
are assigned to each of the professional projects in development as
direction and production assistants, understudies, and sometimes even
performers. Additional seminars are conducted by NYTW staff and artists
to give the students greater access to the inner workings of NYTW’s
creative process, including workshops in Liz Lerman’s Critical
Response Process, movement, and performance forms, and discussions with
actors, writers, directors, and designers about craft and professional
opportunities. Weekly meetings with NYTW staff and students are used
for feedback, suggestions, and planning the upcoming week’s activities.
The NYTW Artistic staff provides written evaluations of the students’
participation, and the students give NYTW written feedback after the
residency is over. Although there are no formal classes in session on the Vassar campus during the summer, Director of Theatre Christopher Grabowski and his colleagues create an opportunity for a number of theatre students to intern with NYTW. Students, artists, and NYTW Artistic staff members are provided room, board, and work space. The Vassar students also are assigned by NYTW staff to specific projects as assistants and sometimes performers. They attend daily staff meetings, mentoring sessions, rehearsals, and informal presentations. The students complete written evaluations of their experience after the residency is over. Students from Vassar and Dartmouth often become interns at NYTW following their initial experience working with the NYTW Artistic staff in the summer. During the fall of 2006, Jason Platt ’06, who assisted with the 2006 Summer Residency, held our Literary internship. This fall, Rachel Lee ’08, who assisted with the 2007 Summer Residency, will be coming to NYTW on Mondays to observe our Mondays @ 3 reading series, and will complete an academic paper documenting her observations under Prof. Grabowski’s supervision.
Born from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation’s challenge grant and created in 2001, the Jonathan Larson Lab is a memorial to the creator of Rent that gives emerging and established theatre artists essential resources, a nurturing creative environment, and an open canvas for exploring their ideas and developing their work. Participants are often given a grant, a venue, and the support of NYTW’s Artistic staff. Project participants are paid for their work and the development phase is designed to serve the need of the artists. Some of these works go on to receive full productions at NYTW or at other theatres around the country. The works developed over at the Jonathan Larson Lab over the past few seasons have included Will Power’s The Seven; Thaddeus Phillips’ ¡El Conquistador!, which opened the 2006/07 Season; Martha Clarke’s KAOS, which also ran in the 2006/07 Season; and Beckett Shorts, which we will produce this season. Current projects include Elevator Repair Service’s new work based on William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury, which will run in this season; and The Beebo Brinker Chronicles, a new play by Kate Moira Ryan and Linda S. Chapman. The Beebo Chronicles will run at NYTW’s 4th Street Theatre in September/October 2007. New York Theatre Workshop gratefully acknowledges the Leading National Theaters Program of the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for its support in establishing an endowment fund to continue and grow NYTW’s Artist Development Activities. Additional support towards the Endowment has been provided by the Select Equity Group Foundation.
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