Michele Baez

National Endowment for the Arts Chairman Jane Chu has approved more than $25 million in grants as part of the NEA's first major funding announcement for fiscal year 2018. Included in this announcement is an Art Works grant of $10,000 to Firehouse Theatre for the world premiere of Richmond composer Walter Braxton's opera TO DAMASCUS. This is the first direct NEA grant that Firehouse has received in its 24 year history.

TO DAMASCUS builds on a range of sources including the bible story of Paul's conversion, August Strindberg's THE ROAD TO DAMASCUS, the rivalry between Lorenzo de' Medici's patronage of secular art versus Girolamo Savanarola's bonfire of the vanities and his call for an orthodox religious revival, Thomas Mann's only play FIORENZO, the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins, James Marcus Schuyler and Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams, and the Catholic Mass. Check out photos below!