By SHARON EBERSON
The National Endowment for the Arts has announced the first round of recommended awards for fiscal year 2024, with 1,288 grants totaling $32,223,055.
Recipients include organizations from all 50 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, in the categories of Grants for Arts Projects, Challenge America, Research Grants in the Arts, and Research Labs.
Among the statewide grants is $35,000 for the world premiere of Mark Clayton Southers latest 19th-century play, The Coffin Maker, directed by Monteze Freeland for Pittsburgh Public Theater. The western-comedy-revenge play takes place in 1849 Oklahoma, where free man Lawrence Ebitts and his wife Eula live peacefully, preparing bodies for burial with care and respect, until their world is turned upside down by a bounty hunter.” The Coffin Maker opens May 29, 2024, at the O’Reilly Theater.
Here are the NEA grant recipients from Southwestern PA and the offerings they will support:
Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh, $37,000. Purpose: To support a professional development program for educators led by the Arts Education Collaborative.
Carnegie Museum of Art, $50,000. Purpose: To support installation costs for the exhibition “Widening the Lens: Photography, Ecology, and the Contemporary Landscape.”
City of Asylum, $25,000. Purpose: To support the Jazz Poetry Month festival.
City Theatre, $30,000. Purpose: To support staff salaries and artist fees for the production “Fat Ham” by James Ijames.
Mattress Factory, $35,000. Purpose: To support an international residency program and the commission of site-specific art installations.
PearlArts Movement and Sound, $48,000. Purpose: To support the creation and presentation of a new work by choreographer Staycee Pearl and sound engineer Herman Pearl, aka Soy Sos.
Pittsburgh Opera, $35,000. Purpose: To support performances of “The Passion of Mary Cardwell Dawson” by composer Carlos Simon and playwright and librettist Sandra Seaton.
Pittsburgh Public Theater, $35,000. To support the world premiere production of “The Coffin Maker” by Mark Clayton Southers.
Radiant Hall Studios, $10,000. Purpose: To support an artist residency program.
Source: arts.gov.
TIM HARTMAN RECEIVES STORYTELLING HONOR
Actor, illustrator and political cartoonist Tim Hartman has entertained Pittsburgh children for decades as a storyteller, and now his CD recording of “Joe Majarac: Man of Steel” has won the 2024 Storytelling World Resource Award.
“Storytelling to kids is really the most important thing I do as an actor in Pittsburgh,” said Hartman, a stalwart entertainer at the Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh who has appeared on Broadway and on local stages for many years, including longstanding roles in Pittsburgh CLO’s A Musical Christmas Carol.
Hartman’s “tall tale” is about the legend of Joe Majarac, “a giant man made of steel who saves the steel workers of the ‘Steel Making Valley’ through self-sacrifice.”
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