The Lark Play Development Center announced Rogelio Martinezas the inaugural recipient of the Lark Mid-Career Playwright Fellowship. This award is a new addition to a growing portfolio of fellowships at the New York City-based playwrights' laboratory that are designed to ensure economic stability for playwrights at transformative junctures in their careers. Effective immediately, the fellowship will last for two years and provide Martinez with financial support, creative resources and professional advocacy. This program is made possible with leadership support from the New York City's Theatre Subdistrict Counciland contributions from individual donors.
The goal of the Mid-Career Fellowship is to offer a financial cushion and creative space to an established playwright in order to take on new challenges and to grow artistically. Martinez will receive a stipend of $25,000 in the first year and $15,000in the second year of his residency. He will have access to a $5,000 "Opportunity Fund" to support travel, research, workshop expenses, and other costs relevant to his creative process. Additionally, a $10,000 Production Subsidy Fund has been set aside to help support a production of one of his plays in New York City. The Lark's extensive toolbox of onsite and offsite programs will be at his disposal, along with its community of skilled theater artists and audiences dedicated to the artistic process. Throughout the course of his residency, Martinez will meet regularly with Lark's Artistic Director
John Clinton Eisner and other program staff to discuss project and career goals. The Lark is currently developing business skills and professional development programs, including an Artist Boot Camp in partnership with the New York Foundation for the Arts, to which Martinez will also have access.
Martinez's work has been developed and presented by the Denver Center Theater,
The Public Theater, Oregon Shakespeare Festival,
Mark Taper Forum,
South Coast Repertory,
Atlantic Theater Company, and the Magic Theater. He is alumnus of
New Dramatists and was the recipient of a Princess Grace Award.
On receiving the news of the award, Martinez commented, "At a time in my life when I sometimes feel as if I am running out of steam, I have been revitalized by this opportunity. This fellowship, at one of the most important homes for playwrights in the American theater, provides me with the necessary time and resources to not only create new work but also revisit past projects – projects that I've been forced to leave behind because lack of time and resources. Looking ahead at the next two years, I'm pleased to know that my plays, experiments, and even my risks will find a generous and encouraging first audience at the Lark."
"Playwrights are vulnerable throughout their careers," remarked Eisner on Martinez' selection for the first Lark Mid-Career Playwright Fellowship. "
Robert Anderson, author of
Tea and Sympathy, famously quipped that you can make a killing in the theater but you can't make a living. Even when playwrights are at the height of their craft and seeing their work produced regularly, our society doesn't tend to reward them financially. But this viewpoint needs to change. If our culture is to survive and thrive, we need to invent new ways to pay for education, healthcare, and the arts up front and not at the speculative back end. The Lark has created a family of financially ambitious fellowships to push the envelope and make the public think again about what it takes to ensure a civil society. At the same time, we are working to keep important playwrights like Rogelio in the game. Rogelio is a brave and incisive writer, a brilliant teacher, and a generous citizen. He is the perfect fellow for this pilot program."
The Lark Mid-Career Playwright Fellowship is one of four life-sustaining fellowships at the Lark including the Jerome New York Fellowship which provides financial, artistic, and career support to an emerging writer of extraordinary ability toward the development of a body of work; Launching New Plays Into the Repertoire ("LNP") Fellowship which brings national recognition to a rising playwright by securing four or more productions of a play by that writer; and thePlaywrights of New York Fellowship (PoNY), in partnership with Playwrights of New York, a partner organization, which provides housing and a monthly living stipend to a playwright as a launching pad to a professional career. Like the Lark Mid-Career Playwright Fellowship, these opportunities include production subsidy and opportunity funds.
For more information about the Lark Play Development Center, please visit:
www.larktheatre.org.
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