NPN Announces 2019 Development Fund Awards


October 9, 2019  •  3 minute read

Marc David Pinate (“Antigone at the Border”). Photo credit: Kelly Presnell / Arizona Daily Star
Antigone at the Border, Marc David Pinate. Photo: Kelly Presnell / Arizona Daily Star.

NPN Announces Fall 2019 Development Fund Awards

Through the Fall 2019 Development Fund, the National Performance Network (NPN) is pleased to announce it is awarding $45,000, and leveraging an additional $177,000, to further support six NPN Creation Fund projects. These projects represent a cross section of disciplines, geographies, cultures and practices that reflect NPN’s commitment to advancing racial justice and cultural equity through the arts.

The Development Fund, which is phase 2 of NPN’s Creation & Development Fund (CDF), helps offset managerial, artistic or technical needs when developing a work. These needs can include supporting technical residencies, building or deepening community engagement, relationship building, storytelling, or studio time to adapt a work for travel.

As part of NPN’s commitment to a more equitable vision for the future, the Creation & Development Fund is open to all disciplines, as long as the project results in a live, experiential exchange between artists and community in the form of public presentations, performances, gallery exhibitions or community activities.

The next Development Fund deadline will be March 13, 2020.

Below are the Fall 2019 Development Fund recipients.

The Creation & Development Fund is made possible with support from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts (a federal agency), and co-commissioners.


Fall 2019 Development Fund Recipients

Jaamil Olawale Kosoko (Brooklyn, NY) and Wexner Center for the Arts (Columbus, OH) — Chameleon

Chameleon is a multi-tiered, multimedia performance project that examines the shape-shifting, illegible, and fugitive realities of Black diasporan people in the United States. The work moves between installation and performance, creating instabilities and slippages between the body and the environment, and the breath and musical score.

This development project will fund a five-day residency at Wexner Center for the Arts that will involve a nearly full artistic and production team to bring together work from several smaller technical residencies.

Andresia Moseley (Tampa, FL) and Art2Action (Tampa, FL) — Five Black Women

Five Black Women is a one-woman show with multiple characters, poetry, a DJ and song that reveals more than the stories of diverse black women. It is about the struggle to identify and what happens when we contemplate letting go of who the world thinks we are.

Five Black Women will be presented at a work-in-progress showing with community engagement activities at StageWorks Theatre in Tampa, FL. Development funds will support an intensive residency assisting with pre-production including artists fees, rehearsals and sound/lighting design.

Leyla McCalla (New Orleans, LA) and Contemporary Arts Center New OrleansBreaking the Thermometer to Hide the Fever (BTT) 

BTT is a multidisciplinary performance set to new music exploring the legacy of Radio Haiti-Inter, Haiti’s first privately owned Kreyol-speaking radio station, and the assassination of its owner, Jean Dominique. The work explores themes of exile and return and the complexities of what it means to be Haitian.

Support will aid in the development of many aspects of the work such as the integration of movement, staging, and implementation of the lighting, sound, projection, costume and set design.

Christopher K. Morgan & Artists (Washington, DC) and Dance Place (Washington, DC) — Native Intelligence/Innate Intelligence (NI/II)

NI/II is a two-part dance performance incorporating modern dance, hula, Hawaiian chant, and live music addressing the multiplicity of identities Morgan navigates, and invite audiences to reflect on their perception of Native people, their own identity, and instinct.

The weeklong residency and work-in-progress showing at Dance Place will be used to integrate the movement, set, music, and projection design of the production. A large-scale fabric used for touring will be created through two community lei making workshops.

Marc Pinate/Borderlands Theater (Tucson, AZ) — Antigone at the Border

Antigone at the Border explores social and psychological impact of US immigration policy on Latinx border communities as legacies of colonialism and white supremacy.  The work will be created in collaboration with immigrant/DACA communities in three western states along with ethnographic interviews from Latinx border patrol agents.

Funds will support collaboration between project artists, Tucson based literary and video collectives, and members of the undocumented queer immigrant community in Tucson that will result in collaborative scripting and video production of three choral odes.

theatre dybbuk (Los Angeles, CA) — breaking protocols

breaking protocols is a response to the nefarious document The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the fabricated conspiracy-theory used to fuel and justify anti-Semitism to the English-speaking world exactly 100 years ago. The work explores contemporary issues such as racism, propaganda, and freedom of speech.

The Development Fund will support artistic fees for the actors, director, choreographer, composer, and stage manager as protocols moves into its second phase of development.