HERE's $100K HARP Residency Program Seeks Applicants

HERE has announced that applications for the HERE Artist Residency Program (HARP) are currently open.

This multi-year, $100,000 residency program was created in 1999 and serves as a national model. HARP provides commission funds, development support, career planning, and a full production to recipients, all within a collaborative environment of peers working across artistic disciplines including theatre, dance, music, puppetry, visual art, and new media. HARP provides significant long-term support, as well as $50,000 in cash and $50,000 in space, equipment and services over two to three years. Each residency is tailored to the needs of the artist.

Through HARP, HERE has developed such highly acclaimed works as Eve Ensler's The Vagina Monologues, Taylor Mac's The Lily's Revenge, Young Jean Lee's Songs of the Dragons Flying to Heaven, Basil Twist's Symphonie Fantastique, Trey Lyford and Geoff Sobelle's All Wear Bowlers, and James Scruggs' Disposable Men, to name a few. Since HARP's founding, HERE has supported the work and career development of 165 lead artists and hundreds of their collaborators.

HARP nurtures the development of nine to eleven artists, through cross-disciplinary exchange, monthly meetings, peer-driven workshops, and panel discussions. Created nearly 20 years ago to address a compelling need in the field-the void of artistic, administrative, and financial support for artists with certain professional accomplishments, but without breakthrough recognition-HARP assists artists who are developing distinct voices and experimenting with new approaches that expand the parameters of performance. HARP is unique by offering a meeting ground where artists from varied disciplines can share diverse perspectives and by developing work with a hybrid performance aesthetic.

The 2018 HARP application is due February 2, 2018 and can be found at here.org.

The OBIE-winning HERE (Kristin Marting, Artistic Director and Kim Whitener, Producing Director), which celebrates its 25th Anniversary this season, was named a Top Ten Off-Off Broadway Theatre by Time Out New York, is a leader in the field of producing and presenting new, hybrid performance viewed as a seamless integration of artistic disciplines-theater, dance, music and opera, puppetry, media, visual and installation, spoken word and performance art.

Standout productions include Eve Ensler's The Vagina Monologues, Basil Twist's Symphonie Fantastique and Arias with a Twist, Trey Lyford & Geoff Sobelle's all wear bowlers, Young Jean Lee's Songs of the Dragons Flying to Heaven, James Scruggs Disposable Men, Corey Dargel's Removable Parts, Taylor Mac's The Lily's Revenge, Kamala Sankaram's Miranda and Robin Frohardt's The Pigeoning, among many others. In 2008, following an extensive renovation, HERE re-opened the doors to its long-time downtown home for the arts, where it continues as a vibrant, welcoming haven for artists and audiences alike.

HERE is also recognized nationally and internationally for the annual PROTOTYPE festival of opera-theatre and music-theatre, co-founded in 2013 and co-produced with Beth Morrison Projects, through which HERE commissions, develops, produces, and presents new 21st century works in that genre; and the Dream Music Puppetry Program, founded in 1998 with the premiere of Basil Twist's Symphonie Fantastique, and co-curated and co-produced with Twist and HERE co-founder, Barbara Busackino.

Since its founding in 1993, HERE and the artists it has supported have received 18 Obies, 2 Bessies, 5 Drama Desk Nominations, 2 Pulitzer Prizes, 4 Doris Duke Awards, and 2 MacArthur Fellowships.