Andrew W. Mellon News

Victory Gardens Theater, under the leadership of Artistic Director Chay Yew and Managing Director Erica Daniels, announces the lineup for its 2018-2019 Season. Victory Gardens' 44th Season will include the Tony Award-nominated play Indecent by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Paula Vogel; the Chicago premieres of Pipeline by Dominique Morisseau and Cambodian Rock Band by Lauren Yee; and the world premieres of Rightlynd by Ike Holter and Miriam for President by Madhuri Shekar.

Playwrights Horizons, under the leadership of Artistic Director Tim Sanford and Managing Director Leslie Marcus, is proud to announce the six productions of its 2018/2019 Season.  The six new works will be presented at the theater company's home at 416 West 42nd Street. 

San Diego Repertory Theatre announces the world premiere of Beachtown, the sixth production of its 42nd season.  Beachtown, based on Beertown by dog & pony dc, is the most immersive, interactive production in the history of San Diego Rep.  Written by the Rep's playwright-in-residence, Herbert Siguenza, with the play's associate director, Rachel Grossman, who is also the co-founder of dog & pony dc.  Siguenza, a founding member of Culture Clash, is also known for writing and performing in A Weekend with Pablo Picasso and Manifest Destinitis.

Seven theatre artists have gathered for the nineteenth annual Sundance Institute Playwrights & Composers Retreat at Ucross Foundation in Wyoming, currently underway from February 5 to February 23, 2018. Designed to support theatrical writing in its earliest stages, the residency is dedicated to uninhibited creativity, peer mentorship and professional growth.

To conclude the 2017-18 season of its Dance Presenting Series, the Dance Center of Columbia College Chicago conducts a two-week festival focusing on ways in which concert dance presentation can be a document of process rather than dance as a consumable product: Process v. Product. The festival takes place March 29-April 7 at the Dance Center, 1306 S. Michigan Ave., Chicago.

This spring Cutting Ball Theater welcomes the return of Founding Artistic Director Rob Melrose to direct Shakespeare's neglected classic, TIMON OF ATHENS, the final play of the Theater's 2017-18 Season. In the title role of Timon, Brennan Pickman-Thoon leads a cast that includes Ed Berkeley, Maria Ascension Leigh, Adam Niemann, Doug Nolan, Radhika Rao, David Sinaiko, John Steele Jr. and Courtney Walsh. Timon of Athens opens in previews on March 30 and runs through April 29. The press opening will take place Thursday, April 5 at 7 p.m. Opening night follows April 6 at 8 p.m. Tickets are $15 - $45, and may be purchased online at cuttingball.com/productions/timon-of-athens or by phone at 415-525-1205.

Victory Gardens Theater introduces Public Programs to Envision Justice through the Lens of Theater, a new initiative made possible by a grant from The David Rockefeller Fund. Public Programs is an event series designed to enhance audience experience by exploring themes and issues within Victory Gardens' productions by provoking dialogue and deepening the relationship between audiences and the plays. Public Programs to Envision Justice takes Victory Gardens one step further by building a stream of citizen engagement programs that will contextualize the plays in relation to the issues surrounding criminal justice and lead audiences to understanding their role in affecting change.

White Bird is proud to welcome Urban Bush Women (UBW) back to Portland. Last performing with White Bird in 2015, UBW has transformed and expanded the dance landscape for more than 33 years by creating groundbreaking work rooted in a female-centric perspective. Urban Bush Women's latest evening-length work Hair and Other Stories runs for three nights at Newmark Theatre on March 1-3.

Choreographer and disability arts innovator Alice Sheppard, along with the Kinetic Light collaborative, announces the New York Premiere of DESCENT. Performed on a custom-designed architectural ramp installation with hills, curves, and peaks, DESCENT explores the pleasures of wheeled movement and reckless abandon. This new evening-length duet takes audiences on a transformative ride and obliterates cultural assumptions of what disability, dance, and beauty can be. Carla Peterson, Director of Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography (MANCC) and former Artistic Director of New York Live Arts, calls DESCENT a 'beautiful, intelligently wrought experience for audiences.'  This limited engagement spans three performances March 22, 23, and 24 at New York Live Arts.

Berkeley Repertory Theatre is proud to announce that it is the recipient of a $50,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). The funds will support The Ground Floor: Berkeley Rep's Center for the Creation and Development of New Work.

NEW YORK, Feb. 7, 2018 /PRNewswire/ The Trustees of The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation have elected Elizabeth Alexander to be the Foundation's next President, effective March 2018. Alexander will succeed Earl Lewis, who has served as President since 2013.

Theatre for a New Audience (TFANA; Jeffrey Horowitz, Founding Artistic Director) has added a performance (February 8 at 9pm) to its critically lauded world premiere production of Adrienne Kennedy's He Brought Her Heart Back in a Box, directed by Evan Yionoulis. The run will conclude, as a scheduled, on February 11.

In response to popular demand, Soho Rep. (Sarah Benson, Artistic Director; Cynthia Flowers, Executive Director) extends the world premiere of Aleshea Harris's Relentless Award-winning Is God Is, directed by Taibi Magar by two weeks, through March 25. In this play, which dauntlessly cracks jokes as it eviscerates, twin sisters Anaia (Alfie Fuller) and Racine (Dame-Jasmine Hughes) undertake a murderous journey from the Dirty South to the California desert, seeking payback for a horrendous act. Is God Is treats both morality and genre as notions to be exploded, drawing on the ancient, the modern, the tragic, the Spaghetti Western, hip-hop and Afropunk in its subversion of theatrical constructs.

Playwrights Horizons (Tim Sanford, Artistic Director; Leslie Marcus, Managing Director) has announced casting for THIS FLAT EARTH, the world premiere of a new play by Lindsey Ferrentino(Ugly Lies the Bone, the current Amy and the Orphans). Directed by Tony Award winner Rebecca Taichman (Familiar, Stage Kiss, Milk Like Sugar at Playwrights, Indecent), the play will be the fourth production of the theater company's 2017/2018 Season.

The palace of Versailles has attracted travelers since it was transformed under the direction of the Sun King, Louis XIV (1638-1715), from a simple hunting lodge into one of the most magnificent public courts of Europe. French and foreign travelers, royalty, dignitaries and ambassadors, artists, musicians, writers and philosophers, scientists, grand tourists and day-trippers alike, all flocked to the majestic royal palace surrounded by its extensive formal gardens. Opening April 16 at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Visitors to Versailles (1682-1789) will track these many travelers from 1682, when Louis XIV moved his court to Versailles, up to 1789, when Louis XVI  (1774-1792) and the royal family were forced to leave the palace and return to Paris.   The exhibition is made possible by The International Council of The Metropolitan Museum of Art.  

Tulsa Ballet, under the artistic direction of Marcello Angelini, will return to The Joyce Theater with a program of works created specifically for the company, including Glass Figures, a world premiere by Resident Choreographer Ma Cong, from March 6-10. Returning to NYC for the first time since 2009, the company will also perform Annabelle Lopez Ochoa's Shibuya Blues and Helen Pickett's Meoal (Among).

The National Association of Latino Arts and Cultures (NALAC) announces its latest cohort of 28 artists and 12 organizations receiving financial support from the NALAC Fund for the Arts (NFA), the only national grant program supporting Latino artists and organizations in all creative disciplines. These 40 recipients are recognized for artistic excellence in pursuit of social justice through the arts.

Due to critical acclaim and popular demand, Playwrights Horizons (Tim Sanford, Artistic Director; Leslie Marcus, Managing Director) has announced a second extension of their presentation of the New York stage return of MILES FOR MARY, a new play created by The Mad Ones. The play is written by Marc Bovino, Joe Curnutte, Michael Dalto, Lila Neugebauer and Stephanie Wright Thompson; in collaboration with Sarah Lunnie and the creative ensemble of Amy Staats and Stacey Yen. Directed by Lila Neugebauer, this new limited engagement at Playwrights Horizons marks the production's Off-Broadway debut.

Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra (LACO), one of the nation's premier music ensembles and a leader in presenting wide-ranging repertoire and adventurous commissions, announces broadened collaborations and inventive new programming for its 2018-19 season.  Opening in September 2018 and continuing into May 2019, the season spotlights LACO's virtuosic artists and builds upon the Orchestra's five decades of intimate and transformative musical programs.  

In December 2016, Stephen Petronio Company purchased Crow's Nest, a 175-acre property in the Catskill Mountains. This bold act not only secures the Company's legacy but also aims to provide a creative home for dance via the Petronio Residency Center, whose first round of residencies the Company is proud to announce today. The inaugural recipients are Nora Chipaumire, Will Rawls, and Kathy Westwater, whose residencies will take place between July-October, 2018. Each artist has been awarded a one-week residency that includes exclusive use of the 9,000 sq. ft. facilities for up to 9 individuals, a $5,000 stipend, and up to $1,500 for travel assistance. This rare and fully-funded opportunity includes room, board, and meals prepared on-site by a chef from locally-sourced ingredients.