TCG/ITI TRAVEL GRANTS PROGRAM

The Theatre Communications Group/International Theatre Institute Travel Grants, funded by the Trust for Mutual Understanding, support cultural exchange and artistic partnerships between theatre professionals and scholars in the United States and their counterparts in Russia and Eastern and Central Europe.

TCG/ITI Travel Grant Recipients, Fall 2004

  • Center for Puppetry Arts (Atlanta, GA) to host Bulgarian director Darin Petkov Marinov of the State Puppet Theatre Stara Zagora; and for Mr. Petkov, along with members of his company, to participate in a series of collaborative activities including puppetry demonstrations for family audiences and an education workshop for teens and adults. Mr. Petrov and his company also performed their adaptation of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.
  • Imagination Stage (Bethesda, MD) to send artistic director Janet Stanford to Croatia to attend the annual International Youth Festival and allow Ms. Stanford to see work by a variety of Eastern European theatre companies and to gain a stronger sense of the Eastern European aesthetic and how it relates to the work of Imagination Stage.
  • Playwright Victor Lodato (Tucson, AZ) to collaborate with the Theatre Na Zábradlí in Prague. Mr. Lodato's play The Eviction was selected to be added to the company's repertory. Mr. Lodato was present during the rehearsal process and worked closely with company member Jirí Ornest, on translation, direction and performance.
  • Mum Puppettheatre (Philadelphia, PA) to send artistic director Robert Smythe to Poland to spend a week with Wroclawski Teatr Lalek (the Wroclaw Puppet Theater) meeting with company members, participating in performances and rehearsals and visit the company's workshops.
  • New York Theatre Workshop (New York, NY) to host Polish director Krystian Lupa for two weeks. Mr. Lupa cast and directed a production of Three Sisters with New York Theatre Workshop and American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge, MA.
  • 7 Stages (Atlanta, GA) to host a number of company members from Dah Teatar, including artistic director Dijana Milosevic, to continue collaboration on The Last Public Execution. The piece, conceived by Ms. Milosevic, has been workshopped in the United States and in Belgrade since 2003 and culminated in a tour through the United States in the summer of 2005.
  • Fiona Templeton (New York, NY) to travel to the Republic of Georgia to continue research work and to involve local artists in her theatre project The Medead, a piece that will trace the versions of the Medea myth which predate the Grecian story.

TCG/ITI Travel Grant Recipients, Spring 2005

  • Director Erica Gould (New York, NY) to work with the Dah Theatre Research Centre in Belgrade, Serbia and Montenegro; to participate in workshops devoted to cross-cultural exchange and creating bridges between theatre artists from different countries and artistic backgrounds. Ms. Gould also adapted Dictionary of the Khazars, Milorad Pavic's novel about ethnic and religious strife among Serbian Christians, Muslims and Jews.
  • Chris Green (New York, NY) to travel to Bulgaria to fulfill the third phase of a long-term collaborative project that he has been developing between experimental puppeteers and archaeologists. In addition, Mr. Green has been invited to observe the third annual International Puppet Theatre Festival for Adults "PIERROT 2005" in Stara Zagora, Bulgaria, and to document the festival's "Director's Lab."
  • John Hofland, associate professor in theatre arts/communications arts at Gonzaga University (Spokane, WA) to meet with representatives from the Odessa Puppet Theatre in Ukraine to further explore how drama exercises can be used to teach disadvantaged children.
  • Director and dramaturg Roberta Levitow (Santa Monica, CA) to return to Bucharest, Romania, to meet with writers from the National University of Theatre and Cinematography and dramAcum (Drama Now) and share playwriting materials, scripts and her own dramaturgical techniques in new play development.
  • Librettist Ruth Margraff and composer Nikos Brisco (New York, NY) to participate in the Karantena International Performing Arts Festival in Dubrovnik, Croatia, and perform original songs and scenes from their Greek/Ottoman inspired "world folk opera" CAFÉ ANTARSIA.
  • Director Christopher Jay Markle and actress Melissa Hawkins (Chicago, IL) to travel to Cluj Napoca, Romania, and to rehearse Andras Visky's one-woman show Julia (Juliet): A Dialogue About Love along with the playwright.
  • Writer and director Peter Petralia (Brooklyn, NY) to write a new theatre piece in collaboration with Russian artists as part of "Capturing the Moving Mind," a conference to take place on the Trans-Siberian Railway from Moscow to Beijing.
  • Co-artistic directors George Ashiotis and Ike Schambelan of Theater by the Blind (New York, NY) to travel with stage manager Ann Morelli and a group of actors to Zagreb, Croatia, to attend the 4th International Blind and Visually Impaired Theatre Festival.