Mellon Creative Fellows
The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has awarded the University of Washington a three and a half year, $750,000 grant to pilot a new Creative Fellowships Initiative that will explore the nature of creative research at a top public research university. The interdisciplinary Initiative will advance the field of performing arts by supporting artists in the development of new work and by integrating the performing arts disciplines into the broader curriculum. This is the first time the University's performing arts units, the School of Music, School of Drama, DXARTS Center, Department of Dance and Meany Center for the Performing Arts, have joined together for an experiment of this scale.
The UW School of Drama's Mellon Creative Fellows are:
DANIEL ALEXANDER JONES |
ABOUT DANIELDaniel Alexander Jones’s wildflower body of work grows in relationship to a wide range of audiences. Duat premiered at Soho Rep in 2016 to critical acclaim. His other performance pieces and plays include Radiate, Phoenix Fabrik, Blood:Shock:Boogie, and Bel Canto; also, the musical, Bright Now Beyond, made with composer Bobby Halvorson and director Will Davis; and his multi-chapter series of solo autobiographical performances, The Book of Daniel, made with musician Walter Kitundu, and director Tea Alagic. Daniel was named a 2015 Doris Duke Artist, in recognition of his risk-taking practice, and a 2016 USA Artist Fellow. |
ABOUT THE PROJECTDaniel Alexander Jones will be exploring the concept of Afromysticism as an anchor for his residency. This exploration will include the development of a contextual framework for a volume of collected writings, a new music theatre piece, and a series of performance writings. Rooted in civic, practical and esoteric processes, ideas of Afromysticism engage a holistic approach to art making geared toward creating emancipatory and transformative experiences. |
MA-YI WRITERS LAB |
ABOUT MA-YI THEATER COMPANYMa-Yi Theater Company recently enjoyed great critical and popular success with Hansol Jung’s Among The Dead, A. Rey Pamatmat’s House Rules, and Nadita Shenoy’s Washer/Dryer. The company won the Off-Broadway Alliance Award for its critically-acclaimed production of The Wong Kids in the Secret of the Space Chupacabra Go!, which recently made its international premiere at the Cultural Center of the Philippines in Manila. Founded in 1989 and now celebrating its 28th season, MA-YI is a Drama Desk and OBIE Award-winning, Off-Broadway not-for-profit organization whose primary mission is to develop and produce new and innovative plays by Asian American writers. Ma-Yi Theater is under the leadership of Producing Artistic Director Ralph B. Peña and Executive Director Jorge Z. Ortoll. |
ABOUT THE PROJECTMa-Yi Theater Company in New York City, a company devoted to cultivating Asian-American voices in the American theatre, send a changing contingent of playwrights from their Writers Lab. Playwrights will participate in 1-week teaching residencies, 2-week developmental residencies, and/or month-long writing residencies. In 2017, UW hosted Kyoung Park and Deepa Purohit for teaching residencies and Dustin Chinn for a one-month writing and research residency. |
SHANNON SCROFANO |
ABOUT SHANNON SCROFANOShannon Scrofano is a Los Angeles-based designer whose work includes interdisciplinary performance, public space, exhibition, curation and conversation projects internationally and throughout the US. She serves as the Director of Design and a Founding Artist of the Center for Performance and Civic Practice, which develops field-building strategies for artists to collaborate cross-sector within communities, and is on the design faculty at California Institute of the Arts. |
ABOUT THE PROJECTShannon Scrofano’s residency will examine design and cognition in situ as it relates to performance work and beyond. The project will explore development of an arts-based methodology for site analysis, and use conversations across campus to build out a generative tool with an eye toward the interdisciplinary beyond the arts sectors, a tool that makes creative “material” from a site, and proposes different modes of analytical blending and perception. During her residency, you may find her at the edge of Union Bay, staring at the water. |
P. CARL |
ABOUT P. CARLP. Carl is a nonfiction writer and Distinguished Artist in Residence at Emerson College, in Boston. He completed his BA in English and MA in Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame, and a PhD in Comparative Studies in Discourse and Society at the University of Minnesota. Carl writes widely on theater, gender, and inclusive practices. The co-founder and past director of HowlRound, a think tank, journal, and knowledge commons committed to building community among international theater makers, he stands at the forefront of creating innovative knowledge platforms and cultural transformation models for arts organizations. In 2018 Carl was awarded The Berlin Prize, and in 2017, he was awarded a prestigious Art of Change Fellowship from the Ford Foundation. He was named Theater Person of the Year in 2015 (National Theater Conference), as well as an Alumni of Notable Distinction (University of Minnesota). He has served as Co-artistic Director of ArtsEmerson at Emerson College, Director of Artistic Development at Steppenwolf Theater in Chicago, and Producing Artistic Director at The Playwrights’ Center in Minneapolis. Recent contributions as a dramaturg and producer include Claudia Rankine’s new play, The White Card, Melinda Lopez’s Mala (2017 Elliot Norton Award Winner for Outstanding New Script), Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen’s How to Be a Rock Critic, and Deborah Stein and Suli Holum’s The Wholehearted. |
ABOUT THE PROJECTP. Carl is writing a memoir entitled, Becoming a White Man. After a twenty-year career in the American theater as a queer, white woman, he underwent a gender transition that not only changed how he was perceived physically, becoming a white man in the era of #MeToo and the white supremacy of the Trump White House, but changed his own relationship to understanding the effects of discrimination and body trauma. The book reflects a kind of double vision, seeing the world from two sides of a gender binary in a political time where the physicality of bodies is an American obsession, putting lives at risk and dividing a country that just may be on the brink of the next social war over who gets to be counted as human |
ERIK EHN |
ABOUT ERIK EHNWork includes The Saint Plays, No Time Like the Present, Wolf at the Door, Tailings, Beginner, 10,000 Things, Clover, Ideas of Good and Evil (linked operas with composer Lisa Bielawa), and Soulographie (17 plays re: genocide). Soulographie scripts include Maria Kizito, Heavenly Shades of Night are Falling, Yermedea, and Drunk Still Drinking. His works have been presented in San Francisco (Intersection, Thick Description, Yugen), Seattle (Annex, Empty Space), Austin (Frontera), New York (BACA, Whitney Museum, La MaMa), San Diego (Sledgehammer), Chicago (Red Moon), Atlanta (7 Stages), Los Angeles (Cal Rep, Museum of Jurassic Technology, Automata), Belgrade (Dah); Oslo (Fyrhusset); Providence (Wilbury Group); elsewhere. He has taught at the U of Iowa, Naropa, UC San Diego, UT Dallas, and Cal Arts (graduate); U San Francisco, SF State, Santa Clara, and Skidmore (undergrad); he has taught workshops with the Belarus Free Theater in Minsk, and Mashirika in Rwanda. Co-Artistic Director, Tenderloin Opera Company (Providence RI – generating new works of music-theater by, for and about people who are homeless/homeless advocates). Graduate of New Dramatists. Head of Playwriting, Brown University. |
ABOUT THE PROJECTEhn is following the thread running through contemplative practices, creative practice, and compassionate social action. The premise: contemplation makes for imaginative freedom; freedom availability enables inclusive methodologies; an esthetic based on ecological, interdependent exchange promotes justice; justice is foundational to beauty (Scarry). He has been leading silent retreats modeled on the Ignatian Spiritual Exercises for artists from diverse disciplines for twelve years. and is exploring collaborations that would offer these retreats year round, for free. |
MEIYIN WANG |
ABOUT MEIYIN WANGMeiyin Wang is a producer and curator of live performance based in the Bay Area. She is currently the Director of La Jolla Playhouse’s Without Walls Festival, a site specific and experiential performance festival. She was most recently the Co-Director of Under the Radar Festival and the Director of the Devised Theater Initiative at The Public Theater in New York. Current producing and consulting projects include Octavia E. Butler's Parable of the Sower by Toshi Reagon with Bernice Johnson Reagon, directed by Eric Ting; and Pig Iron's A Period of Animate Existence with directed Dan Rothenberg, composer Troy Herion and designer Mimi Lien. As a director, she has worked at Singapore Repertory Theater, Joe’s Pub, La MaMa, Women’s Project, HERE Arts Center, Museum of Chinese in America, American Repertory Theater, Long Beach Opera and Brava Theater. Meiyin serves on the board of Theater Communications Group and an associate artist of Singapore Repertory Theatre. She holds a B.A in Political Science and Theater Studies from Yale University and an M.F.A. in Directing from Columbia University. Meiyin was born and raised in Singapore. |
ABOUT THE PROJECTMeiyin Wang will be investigating notions of space that have been cracked open by developments in virtual, augmented and mixed reality, and the role that live art plays within this new vocabulary. |
Each year the School of Drama invites guests into our classrooms. Guests range from professional theatre artists and scholars who conduct workshops and seminars, to alumni working in the field who come back to share their experiences. Recent guests to the School have included:
Marcel Banks special effects make-up artist |
Anne Bogart co-artistic director, SITI Company |
Lee Breuer founding co-artistic director, MabouMines |
Rick Cluchey co-founder, San Quentin Drama Workshop |
Louis Colaianni Linklater, speech, dialects, acting |
Chuck Cooper actor |
Sheila Daniels director |
Ron Davis director, founder of San Francisco Mime Troupe |
Michael Dixon playwright, director, dramaturg |
Deborah Dryden costume design |
David Hammond director, acting teacher |
Keith Hitchcock actor, director |
George Clayton Johnson writer |
Scott Kaiser Company Development / Voice-Text, Oregon Shakespeare, alum |
Mariana Klaveno actor and alum |
Dennis Krausnick Shakespeare and Company |
John Langs director |
Ming Cho Lee design |
Sandi Logan Head of Casting ABC/Disney |
Whit MacLaughlin artistic director, New Paradise Laboratories |
Wade Madsen choreographer, dancer |
Jerry Manning director |
Francesca Marini archival studies |
Joel McHale actor and alum |
Jane Nichols master acting teacher |
Hugh O'Gorman actor and alum |
Brian O'Neill business of acting |
Zandra Rhodes textile artist and costume designer |
Carol Roscoe acting, business |
Ian Ruskin acting, solo performance |
Robert Schenkkan playwright and screenwriter |
Tom Skerritt actor |
Amy Thone actor |
Stan Welles improv |
Farin Zahedi head of Drama, Tehran University |