BREWSTER, N.Y.: SPACE on Ryder Farm has announced the 2018 artists selected for summer residencies on its 223-year-old working farm, as well as the lineup of shows for the summer season.
All individual and small group residences are provided at no cost to participants, and SPACE endeavors to grant at least 50 percent of the residencies to persons of color and underrepresented voices each year. This summer SPACE will pilot a travel assistance fund for the Family Residency grant to support travel costs for the participating artists and their families.
“Selected from a record-breaking 1,112 applications representing 2,092 individuals, SPACE’s 2018 season reflects the incredible richness and diversity of the artistic community and of individuals working in the social justice and human rights sphere,” said co-founder and executive director Emily Simoness in a statement. “The remarkable people, voices, and projects we are hosting on Ryder Farm this season will, no doubt, make relevant and lasting contributions to our culture and the national conversation in these divided times.”
SPACE’S resident writers’ group, the Working Farm, will provide 7 playwrights and 1 composer/lyricist with a non-consecutive five-week residency over the summer. The selected residents include Ngozi Anyanwu, Will Arbery, Donnetta Lavinia Grays, Dave Harris, A. Rey Pamatmat, Michael Thurber, Anne Washburn, and Stefanie Zadravec. After the residency, Working Farm playwrights are offered a public reading of their new play the following spring in partnership with Playwrights Horizons, which SPACE is a resident company of.
Also in partnership with Playwrights Horizons, SPACE will host playwrights Milo Cramer and Eric John Meyer. As part of its partnership with American Conservatory Theater’s New Strands Festival, SPACE will welcome Ngozi Anyanwu, Kate Sullivan, and Emily Kaczmarek to the farm for continued development of their SPACE and A.C.T.-supported projects. Playwright Gracie Gardner will also receive a week-long residency in partnership with the American Playwriting Foundation Relentless Award. Playwrights Isaac Gomez and Madhuri Shekar will be developing new plays with Audible, while another group of playwrights yet to be announced will work on developing new scripted fiction projects for the Stitcher podcasting network.
The Family Residency, founded in association with the Lilly Awards Foundation, provides working artists with children a week-long residency designed to accommodate families. The selected artists for the Family Residency will include include César Alvarez and Emily Orling, Lindsey Bailey, Stacia Brown, Delano Dunn, Amy Fox, Sarah Gancher, Jesse Hawley and James Stanley, Eliza Hittman, Shivon Love, Pooja Makhijani, Denby Swanson, Tiffanie Turner, and their children. The SPACE staff will facilitate nature-focused programming for the kids.
This year’s Creativity Residency program, which offers artists a 1-2 week residency for multiple disciplines, will include individual artists and teams Todd Almond and Kate Douglas, Kevin Artigue, Stephen Belber, Sarah E. Brook, David Cale, John J. Caswell, Jr., Shana Cooper and Ian Merrigan, Lisa D’Amour and Katie Pearl, Sxip Shirey, Safia Elhillo, Daniel Emond, Lee Sunday Evans and Jerry Lieblich, Julia Gibson, Isaac Gomez, Suzanne Heathcote, Elliah Heifetz, Anita Hollander, Obehi Janice, CA Johnson, Nambi E. Kelley, Ryan King, Joseph Legaspi, Mei Lum and Diane Wong, Deb Margolin, Daria Marinelli, Michael McElroy, Syreeta McFadden, Lenelle Moïse, Tomas Moniz, Riley Mulherkar, Joyce O’Connor, Brian Otaño, Deepa Purohit, Arabelle Sicardi, Lizzie Stern, Mikaal Sulaiman, Ikechukwu Ufomadu, and Betty Yu.
The Creative Solutions Symposium is a weeklong residency for activists and organizers. Johnny Perez, director of U.S. Prison Programs for the National Religious Campaign Against Torture, will lead the symposium. Participants will include WITNESS, the Vera Institute of Justice Ending Girls’ Incarceration initiative, Bronx-based community organization Brown Girl Recovery, and the Chicago Community Bond Fund.
SPACE’s Film Lab, now in its second year, will welcome a group of early and mid-career filmmakers for one-on-one consultations. The program will be led by curator Gina Duncan, associate vice president of Cinema at BAM, and the 2018 Film Lab residents are Darius Clark Monroe, Nia Dacosta, Shaina Feinberg, Rachel H. Smith, Sydney Freeland, Steph Green, Noah Hutton, and Chioke Nassor.
SPACE’s Greenhouse Residency offers promising early-career writers a weeklong residency on Ryder Farm with mentorship from playwright Adam Bock. A preference is given to playwrights who have not attended graduate school or been part of a professional writers’ group. The 2018 cohort includes Nissy Aya, Edison Diaz, Chloe Hayat, Lorenzo Roberts, Kolya Shrayfer, Yilong Liu, and Allison Zajac-Batell.
Lastly, SPACE will host several organizations and companies at the farm for workshops, retreats, and strategic planning. Participants will include American Conservatory Theater’s New Strands Festival, the American Playwriting Foundation, Audible, Bedlam, the Classical Theatre of Harlem, the Dramatists Guild Foundation, the Lark, the New Victory Theater, Page 73 Productions, Playwrights Horizons, Rattlestick Playwrights Theater, Roundabout Theatre Company, El Semillero: ALTA Chicago’s Latinx Playwrights Circle, Steppenwolf Theatre Company, the Stitcher podcast network, and Theatre Communications Group.
