Observership Program
2008 Recipients
Melanie Joseph, producing artistic director of The Foundry Theatre (New York, NY) will travel to Sao Paulo, Brazil and visit Antonio Araujo and his company Teatro da Vertigem. While there, she will observe the company as they develop the material Mr. Araujo and Ms. Joseph created during his two-week residency at The Foundry in August 2007.
Imagination Stage (Bethesda, MD) artistic director Janet Stanford will visit two festivals in Denmark in order to learn about assessment tools, and utilize them at their 2010 Conference in Washington, DC. She will also discuss bringing the organizers to Imagination Stage to present their plays and for possible collaborations.
Marcella Kearns, education director at Milwaukee Shakespeare (Milwaukee, WI), will visit three theatres, Chicago Shakespeare Theater, Georgia Shakespeare (Atlanta, GA) and the Alliance Theatre (Atlanta, GA). During her visits she will study models of education departments to compare teacher training on Shakespeare and collaborations with local educators on in-school instruction and curriculum.
New York Theatre Workshop manager of government & foundation relations Heather Cohn will visit two LEED-certified green theatres - Portland Center Stage (Portland, OR) and Theatrical Outfit (Atlanta, GA) - in order to gain a deeper understanding of the process of building green, as well as what challenges and opportunities exist in terms of fundraising for green capital projects.
Northern Stage (White River Junction, VT) artistic director Brooke Ciardelli and producing director Catherine Doherty will visit approximately 10 theatres throughout the East Coast to view theatres that are similar to one they hope to build within the next few years. At each theatre, they will study physical layout, how technical needs are met, how seating is arranged, how administrative offices are laid out and what ancillary services are available.
Donald W. King, artistic and executive director, and Megan Sandberg-Zakian, associate director, of The Providence Black Repertory Company (Providence, RI) will travel to see a play they developed along with the Rites and Reason Theatre (Providence, RI), The Ballad of Emmett Till, to be produced by the Goodman Theatre (Chicago); as well as take inspiration from Chicago's other innovative theatres, and examine the factors that have made Chicago a "theatre destination.”
OBSERVERSHIP PANEL 2008
A national independent selection panel comprised of theatre professionals reviewed applications for the 2008 Observership Program. The selection panelists were Richard Garner, cofounder and producing artistic director, Georgia Shakespeare (Atlanta, GA); Jennie Greer, director of institutional advancement, New Dramatists (New York, NY); David Jobin, managing director, Magic Theatre (San Francisco, CA); Stacey Parshall, playwright and former director of Chicago Avenue Project (Los Angeles, CA); Eileen Suarez, managing director, New Theatre (Coral Gables, FL).