ATLANTA: Alliance Theatre has announced that Marie Cisco is its new BOLD associate artistic director, and Abrianna Belvedere has been named its BOLD producing associate. As members of the Alliance’s artistic team, Cisco and Belvedere will support many of the Alliance’s new-works initiatives, including its renowned Alliance/Kendeda National Graduate Playwriting Competition and its Reiser Atlanta Artists Lab.
Cisco, an Atlanta native, has a background as a theatre and film producer. She has worked for MPAACT, the National Black Theatre, the New Black Fest, the Apollo, the Fire Ensemble, and the Public Theater, where she produced the development of new work for internal productions and Broadway transfers. Marie served as a creative executive for Lee Daniels Entertainment and as the producing partner and managing director for Stardust Films by Common. She was also a co-producer for the Broadway revival of The Wiz. Cisco has worked diligently as an arts strategist and consultant for the past 15 years and is passionate about creating environments for artists to achieve their best work. In her role at the Alliance, Cisco will also oversee the development of local talent through the Alliance’s Spelman leadership fellowship and the Kenny Leon associate director programs.
Belvedere is a new-work producer, dramaturg, and deviser based in Atlanta. They have a love for community-oriented new work, and for showcasing Southern, queer, and feminist narratives. Belvedere also serves as co-producer of SheATL, a summer theatre festival that showcases new work by female, trans, and gender non-conforming playwrights. Notable devised work includes Morning Has Broken, a movement piece that grieves intergenerational trauma and examines its intersections with disability, poverty, and Southern identity. In addition to supporting new works at the Alliance, Belvedere will provide support for audience engagement, community partnerships, dramaturgical research, and literary initiatives.
Both positions at the Alliance are supported by the BOLD Theater Women’s Leadership Circle, whose mission is to create a network of women artistic directors in professional theatres across the United States and empower them to address the issues preventing women from advancing in theatre leadership. The Alliance’s previous BOLD associate artistic director was Tinashe Kajese-Bolden, who was chosen as the theatre’s co-artistic director in 2023, alongside co-artistic director Christopher Moses.
NEW YORK CITY: The Perelman Performing Arts Center and Civis Foundation have announced eight artistic commissions for the inaugural year of the Democracy Cycle, a program which invites artists to explore themes relating to the nature, practice, and experience of democracy. This multi-year program is committed to 25 commissions across theatre, opera, dance, music, and multidisciplinary practices. Each selected project will receive $60,000 in support, consisting of a $30,000 commission and another $30,000 for project development.
The Democracy Cycle is designed to support new live performance works that illuminate the promise, practice, imperfection, and opportunity of democracy. The initiative aims to invigorate discussion and expression of democratic values by supporting the unique abilities of artists to imagine new worlds, envision new possibilities, and provoke meaningful discourse across any number of divides.
The artists and artistic collaborations chosen to receive the 2024 Democracy Cycle commissions are Javaad Alipoor; Baye & Asa; Charlotte Brathwaite, June Cross and Sunder Ganglani; Pablo Manzi and Bonobo Teatro; Angélica Negrón; Vickie Ramirez, Ty Defoe and Jeanette Harrison; Abigail Nessen Bengson and The Bengsons; Talvin Wilks and Paul Schiff Berman. All 25 projects will be commissioned and developed over a five-year period, with at least eight more artists chosen in each of the 2025 and 2026 open calls.
“I am overwhelmed by the response this initiative has had in the artistic community,” said Perelman Performing Arts Center artistic director Bill Rauch in a statement. “We fiercely believe in supporting artists in their work so that the arts can continue to foster civic dialogue and understanding. As a new organization, we take that job seriously. So it was joyous and humbling to have 450 submissions from around the globe in our very first round. I’m thrilled to see what these remarkable commissioned artists will create and how their work will help us understand democracy in new ways.”
Submissions for the Democracy Cycle’s next open call for proposals will begin in January 2025, with submission guidelines on the website in December. Artists creating in theatre, dance, music, opera, and multidisciplinary practices are encouraged to apply. This is a national and international open call.
NEW YORK CITY: MAP Fund—one of the longest-running private funding sources championing cultural equity and formal innovation in performance practices—has awarded $2.883 million to 93 grantees for their live performance projects.
With a record-breaking 2,378 total submissions, the 2024 grant cycle saw a 50 percent increase in applicants, marking the largest one-time award distribution in the organization’s 36-year history. Currently, each MAP grant comprises a total of $31,000: $25,000 for grantee project development, $5,000 for grantee unrestricted support and $1,000 microgrant for the grantee to direct to a peer artist of their choice.
Grantees will create experimental music, public art installations, opera, multi-sensory media, live electronics, poetry, ritual, musical theatre, puppetry, culinary arts and more. Their projects explore the politics of memory, healing collective trauma, cultural continuity despite colonization and expanding our collective understanding of disability and confronting catastrophe—from climate to pandemics to the violence of borders.
Accompanying the award, MAP incorporates an unrestricted $1,000 microgrant for grantees to distribute to an artist in their community. The microgrants program launched in 2022 as an artist-directed initiative to share the wealth of a MAP award, enhance grantees’ agency and extend the reach of MAP resources. Fostering a place for valuing mutual recognition, appreciation and camaraderie, the microgrants underscore MAP’s practice of directly turning to artists to determine who in their own communities would benefit from resources. Micrograntees will be announced in October.
MAP Fund’s work is made possible through partnership with Doris Duke Foundation, Mellon Foundation, Howard Gilman Foundation and Walder Foundation. Additional support comes from Jerome Foundation, The National Endowment for the Arts, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, the New York State Council on the Arts and dozens of individual donors.
NEW YORK CITY: Ensemble Studio Theatre’s Youngblood, the Obie-winning collective of emerging professional playwrights, has announced its new members for the 2024-25 season: Morgan Barnes-Whitehead, Stefani Kuo, Abigail C. Onwunali, Fernando Buzhar Segall, and Matt Shvyrkov.
Now in its 31st year, Youngblood serves as a creative home for the next generation of theatre artists. Youngblood provides artistic guidance, peer support, regular feedback, and a fertile development environment, which allows member playwrights to hone their skills and explore their craft. The group also provides exposure to the public and the press, professional outreach to the industry, and opportunities for production and publication.
Morgan Barnes-Whitehead is a playwright, dramaturg, and educator originally from Ann Arbor, Michigan and now based in New York City. She received her BA and MA from Bard College (’21 and ’22), studying playwriting and teaching respectively. As a theatre administrator, she has worked at Page 73 and National Black Theatre. Her work has been produced by New Perspectives Theatre as a member of their Women’s Work Short Play Lab and by Harlem 9 as a 2024 cohort member of 24 Hours in Harlem.
Stefani Kuo 郭佳怡 is a poet/playwright/performer and native of Hong Kong and Taiwan. She received her BA from Yale and her MFA in playwriting from the Yale School of Drama. Her play on the Hong Kong protests, Final Boarding Call, was the winner of the 2021 Lead Ryan Fund for Emerging Women Writers’ Prize. Her play Wake was presented in the Yale Langston Hughes Festival 2022. Her play Pearl’s Beauty Salon was produced in May 2024 as part of the Yale Carlotta Festival. She has been commissioned by The Atlantic Theater, Ensemble Studio Theater, Roundhouse Theater, Yangtze Repertory Theatre.
Abigail C. Onwunali is a multifaceted Nigerian American artist known for her versatility and passion. Her play Jewel was one of Red Bull Theater’s Short New Play Festival winners, and her slam poems have been viewed worldwide. She was the recipient of the 2022 Princess Grace Award and an acting fellow of Lena Waithe’s Hillman grad mentorship program. She is currently a playwriting resident at Liberation Theater Company. She holds an MFA from the David Geffen School of Drama at Yale.
Fernando Buzhar Segall is a New York-based writer from Brazil, where he spent his formative years working as a clown and actor. His writing has been described as “hiding the veggies,” using farce and clown traditions to explore deeper social and political issues. Full-length plays include Saudades, The World’s Most Boring Murder, and The Devil and The Candlemaker. Fernando is the official translator of Lynn Nottage’s and Itamar Moses’s works into Portuguese. He holds two BFAs from NYU and an MFA from Columbia University.
Matt Shvyrkov is a playwright originally from a double-wide trailer deep in the swampy backwoods of deep red North Florida. His work has been produced/supported/otherwise recognized by the Barrow Group, Dixon Place, the Tank, the Strides Collective, Monument Theatre Company, and Austin Film Festival, among others. He is a current member of EST/Youngblood and teaches playwriting/screenwriting at Tusculum University.
NATIONAL: The Parent-Artist Advocacy League (PAAL) has announced the establishment of the LaNeshe Miller-White BIPOC Org Care Fund. This national fund is dedicated to supporting BIPOC organizations in their support of the parents and caregivers in their artist and administrative community. With the creation of this fund, PAAL aims to honor LaNeshe’s legacy and continue vital work by providing financial assistance and resources to those who need it most.
LaNeshe Miller-White, originally hailing from Bridgeport, Conn., has immersed herself in Philadelphia’s arts scene for nearly two decades. She champions arts accessibility and social impact, currently steering Philadelphia Young Playwrights as executive director. Previously, she led Theatre Philadelphia, the region’s umbrella marketing and support organization for theatremakers and theatregoers. A Temple University alum, Miller-White’s tenure at Painted Bride Art Center spanned a decade as marketing manager. She co-founded Theatre in the X, an organization focused on breaking the boundaries to theater and employing artists of color. Recognized for her advocacy, she is a two-time Leeway Foundation grantee and serves on the advisory board of the Parent-Artist Advocacy League.
