NEW YORK CITY: New York Live Arts has named writer, performer and choreographer Okwui Okpokwasili the recipient of its Resident Commissioned Award (RCA). The prize provides $200,000 in direct support over two years, including a salary, health benefits, two years of residency time, and a commission of a work that will premiere at Live Arts.
Okpokwasili is the third artist to receive the RCA, and the support will span 2015 to 2017. “I am thrilled to be named Live Arts’ newest RCA, and to receive the depth of support that this award and commission brings,” said Okpokwasili in a statement. “I now have a two-year span where my greatest concern can be the breadth of my imagination and the rigor of my practice. I look forward to this collaboration with New York Live Arts.”
She will use her time at New York Live Arts to develop her the multidisciplinary performance piece Poor People’s TV Room, created with Peter Born. The work will integrate dance, song, text, and film to tell the story of Aba Women’s Riots in Nigeria in 1929. Poor People’s TV Room will play at the end of Live Arts’ 2016–17 season. In addition, Okpokwasili’s Bronx Gothic will be presented at Live Arts this October.
Live Arts also announced the recipients of its Residency Artists Program for the 2015–16 season: Andrea Kleine, Sonya Tayeh, Adrienne Truscott, Preeti Vasudevan, Larissa Velez-Jackson, and Gillian Walsh. The artists will develop new work that will premiere at Live Arts in the upcoming season (listings below).
- Sonya Tayeh, You’ll Still Call Me By Name (working title), Dec. 4–5
- Gillian Walsh, Title TBD, Feb. 26–27, 2016
- Andrea Kleine, Torture Playlist, March 18–19, 2016
- Preeti Vasudevan, Stories by Hand, April 8–9, 2016
- Larissa Velez-Jackson, Title TBD, April 15–16, 2016
- Adrienne Truscott, Wild Bore, May 20–21, 2016
