Lookingglass Awarded Doris Duke Charitable Foundation Grant to Create 'Civic Practice Lab'

Lookingglass Theatre Company has been selected to receive a 37­-month grant of $155,000 from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation's Artist Residencies to Build Demand for the Arts Program. The purpose of the grant is to support an artist residency at Lookingglass Theatre Company to conduct a project to increase demand for the performing arts.

With this grant, Lookingglass Theatre Company and Michael Rohd will establish a "Civic Practice Lab" to transform how Lookingglass engages constituencies and develops stakeholders, placing assets of creativity and collaboration in service to and in relationship with non-arts partners. The grant also includes funds to defray the costs of evaluating the project.

Michael Rohd comments, "I believe Civic Practice is a significant new frame for how the arts and non-arts sectors collaborate in our communities. This partnership with Lookingglass is a chance for me to expand the national work I've been developing at the Center for Performance and Civic Practice and at Sojourn Theatre into a specific, institutional strategy with the hope that our learnings become field learnings. I've known the Lookingglass folks since we were in school at NU together; we've remained friends, colleagues and mutual admirers for a while now. It's pretty great to get to work on this together."

"Very rarely do individuals and institutions get to embark on a project together that has the potential to have not just local but national impact. This is one such endeavor," said Artistic Director Andrew White. "Michael is a nationally-recognized pioneer in the field of bringing theater to practical and meaningful use in diverse communities across the country. Simply put, no one does this kind of work better. And Lookingglass has been bringing theater into communities around Chicago in service of our mission 'to change, charge and empower' since the company's inception. Having known each other's work for literally decades, we are thrilled to now enter into this new partnership for a Civic Practice Lab. The work we embark upon together will explore how we as individuals and collectives talk to and work with each other, and serve as a field-study for Civic Practice as a demand-building strategy for American theater. A journey of this scale is possible only through the visionary commitment of the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, which has stepped forward to make possible such unique alignments of forces and vision (with the Doris Duke Artist Residencies to Build Demand for the Arts)."

"The partnership between Lookingglass Theater and artist Michael Rohd promises to be an extraordinary one, not only for what it will do for the participants and the Chicago community but as a model for how other institutional theaters might think expansively about embracing new artists and new impulses," saidDoris Duke Charitable Foundation Program Director for the Arts Ben Cameron. "All of us at the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation are honored to support this extraordinary project and look forward to what we all will learn from it."

Lookingglass Theatre and Michael Rohd are one of ten teams of U.S. performing arts organizations and artists that will receive a combined total of $1.475 million in grants from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation for joint efforts to develop public demand for jazz, theatre and/or contemporary dance. Unlike most residency programs, which focus on the creation of new work and creative time for artists, the Doris Duke Artist Residencies to Build Demand for the Arts instead support partnerships between artists and organizations collaborating in inventive ways to create and pilot methods for reaching the public and developing their interest in and access to the performing arts. Other recipients include BRIC Arts Media and Ronald K. Brown; Childsplay and Zarco Guerrero; Epic Theatre Center and Heather Raffo; Georgia Tech, Ferst Center for the Arts and Jonah Bokaer; Studio @620 and Sharon E. Scott; University of Illinois, Krannert Center for the Performing Arts and Anne Bogart; University of Minnesota, Northrup Auditorium and Emily Johnson; Wooster Group and Young Jean Lee; and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts and Myra Melford.

The mission of the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation is to improve the quality of people's lives through grants supporting the performing arts, environmental conservation, medical research and the prevention of child abuse, and through preservation of the cultural and environmental legacy of Doris Duke's properties. The Arts Program focuses its support on contemporary dance, jazz and theatre artists, and the organizations that nurture, present and produce them. The Foundation awarded its first grants in 1997, and to date, has awarded grants totaling more than $1.1 billion. For more information, visit www.ddcf.org.

Michael Rohd is founding artistic director of Sojourn Theatre, a thirteen-year old ensemble-based company and a 2005 recipient of Americans for the Arts'Animating Democracy Exemplar Award. He devises and directs new work around the nation and is on faculty at Northwestern University where he helps lead the MFA Directing Program. He wrote the widely translated book Theatre for Community, Conflict, and Dialogue (15th printing, Heinemann Press, 1998). He leads the recently formed Center for Performance and Civic Practice, an ongoing body of activity comprised of research, programs and projects that aim to make visible the power of the arts to demonstrably increase civic capacity. His work with the Center, Sojourn, and in non-arts sector settings around the nation focuses on social practice and civic practice cross-disciplinary projects through collaboratively designed arts-based engagement and participation strategies. Recent/Current projects include a two year Sojourn Artist-in-Residence collaboration with Catholic Charities USA poverty reduction sites around the US; a Center partnership with Planning Commissions around the country utilizing civic practice in public engagement settings to help communities deal with difficult conversations and resource allotment; and, a site-based original show at the Flint, Michigan Farmer's Market looking at race, economics and place.

Inventive. Collaborative. Transformative. Lookingglass Theatre Company, recipient of the 2011 Regional Theatre Tony Award, was founded in 1988 by eight Northwestern University students. 2011-2012 marks the company's 25th anniversary season. Lookingglass is home to a multi-disciplined ensemble of artists who create story-centered theatrical work that is physical, aurally rich and visually metaphoric. Lookingglass is staging its 60th world premieres this Summer, has performed at 23 venues across Chicago, and has garnered 52 Joseph Jefferson Awards and Citations.

Work premiered at Lookingglass has been produced in New York City, Los Angeles, Seattle, Berkeley, Philadelphia, Princeton, Hartford, Kansas City, Washington D.C., and St. Louis. Lookingglass original scripts have been produced across the United States.

The Lookingglass Theatre in Chicago's landmark Water Tower Water Works opened in June 2003. In addition to developing and presenting ensemble work, Lookingglass Education and Community programs encourage creativity, teamwork and confidence with thousands of community members each year.

Lookingglass Theatre Company continues to expand its artistic, financial and institutional boundaries under the guidance of Artistic Director Andrew White, Executive Director Rachel Kraft, Producing Artistic Director Philip R. Smith, Artistic Director of New Work Heidi Stillman, a 24-member artistic ensemble, 13 artistic associates, 11 production affiliates, an administrative staff and a dedicated board of directors led by Chairman Richard Ditton of Incredible Technologies and President Joe Brady of Jones Lang LaSalle. For more information, visit lookingglasstheatre.org.

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