Center Theatre Group's BENGAL TIGER Chosen for NEA Grant

Center Theatre Group announced today that one of its new plays has been chosen by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) as one of the inaugural selections in the NEA New Play Development Program.

As one of two recipients of Arts Endowment support for an NEA Outstanding New American Play project, Center Theatre Group will receive $90,000 to support advanced development activities, culminating in a full production and world premiere of Rajiv Joseph's "Bengal Tiger in the Baghdad Zoo" in May 2009 in the Kirk Douglas Theatre's 2008-2009 season. CTG will collaborate closely with playwright Joseph on activities such as workshops and staged readings of the new play.

Administered by Arena Stage, the NEA New Play Development Program is intended to help the nation's nonprofit theatres bring more new plays to full production. The second selection was a project by the McCarter Theatre, Tarrell Alvin McCraney's trilogy "The Brother/Sister Plays."

 "Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo" is a lyrical, haunting new play set against the backdrop of the war in Iraq. The lives and, in some cases, the afterlives,  of two American soldiers, an Iraqi translator, the ghosts of Saddam Hussein's sons Uday and Ousay, and a Bengal tiger all intersect in a surreal, darkly humorous and gently balanced view of war and its aftermath.  The play will be directed by Tony Award-nominated Moisés Kaufman ("I Am My Own Wife"). ").  "Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo" is also a recipient of an Edgerton Foundation New American Plays Award.

Rajiv Joseph received his MFA in playwriting from the Tisch School of the Arts in 2004, and in January 2006 he had his play "Huck & Holden" produced at the Cherry Lane Theatre in New York, and then subsequently at the Black Dahlia Theatre in Los Angeles. At Second Stage in New York, Joseph's "All This Intimacy" premiered in 2006 and his "Animal Out of Paper" premiered in 2008. He is the 2008 recipient of the Vineyard Theatre's Paula Vogel Playwriting Award.

"Every year the NEA supports about 135 new theatrical premieres, but the NEA New Play Development Program, in partnership with Arena Stage, is something special. It creates a small but superb national network to develop new works from across the country," said NEA Chairman Dana Gioia.

"Arena Stage fiercely believes American playwrights are the lifeblood of our American theatre. Therefore, a big part of Arena's mission is focused on finding ways to further the development of these voices," said Arena Stage Artistic Director Molly Smith. "Our initial excitement at being selected to host the NEA New Play Development Program grew exponentially throughout this process: first with the quality of the applications, then with the quality of the discussions at panel, and finally into the selections themselves. It has been a privilege to partner in a vibrant way with the NEA on this important project, and we now look forward to witnessing the evolution of each of these remarkable plays."

The NEA New Play Development Program also will support artistic excellence in the theatre field by encouraging dialogue around existing and new models for new play development, including the selected projects. In partnership with the NEA, Arena Stage will provide a forum that will not only encourage this discussion but will actively support the dissemination of any findings throughout the field. This inaugural round of the NEA New Play Development Program will culminate in a festival presentation of all of the selected projects at Arena Stage in fall 2010.

 For more information about the NEA New Play Development Program, please visit http://npdp.arenastage.org/.

Under the leadership of Artistic Director Michael Ritchie, Center Theatre Group, a non-profit organization, is one of the largest and most active theatre companies in the nation, programming seasons year-round at the 739-seat Mark Taper Forum and the 1,600 to 2,000-seat Ahmanson Theatre at the Music Center of Los Angeles, and the 317-seat Kirk Douglas Theatre in Culver City. With the Taper, the Ahmanson and the Douglas, CTG has a combined subscription audience of 50,000 and a total audience exceeding 750,000 a year. Center Theatre Group's mission is to provide Los Angeles, national and international audiences with the greatest range of theatrical entertainment available from one theatre company, from groundbreaking new works to explosive productions of the classics to hit Broadway plays and musicals.  For more information about CTG and its 2008-2009 season, please visit www.CenterTheatreGroup.org.

The National Endowment for the Arts is a public agency dedicated to supporting excellence in the arts, both new and established, bringing the arts to all Americans, and providing leadership in arts education. Established by Congress in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal government, the Arts Endowment is the nation's largest annual funder of the arts, bringing great art to all 50 states, including rural areas, inner cities, and military bases. For more information, please visit www.arts.gov.

Under the leadership of Artistic Director Molly Smith, Washington, D.C.-based Arena Stage has become the largest theatre in the country dedicated to American plays and playwrights. Founded in 1950 by Zelda Fichandler, Thomas Fichandler, and Edward Mangum, Arena Stage was one of the nation's original resident theatres, and has a distinguished record of leadership and innovation in the field. With the opening of the new Mead Center for American Theater in 2010, Arena Stage will have emerged as a leading center for the production, development and study of the American theatre. Now in its sixth decade, Arena Stage serves a diverse annual audience of more than 200,000. For more information please visit www.arenastage.org 

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