WASHINGTON, D.C.: The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) has announced 1,474 awards totaling $36,790,500 to support the arts in communities in all 50 states, Puerto Rico, and Washington, D.C. Funding for organizations is recommended in the categories of Grants for Arts Projects, Challenge America, Research Grants in the Arts, and Research Labs, and for individuals through Literature Fellowships in creative writing and for translation projects.
Within the theatre category, 148 grants were awarded for a total of $3,730,000. Within musical theatre, 29 grants were awarded for a total of $930,000.
Further information on awards can be viewed by discipline here and through the recent grant search.
CHICAGO: The Gaylord and Dorothy Donnelley Foundation (GDDF) has announced more than $1.58 million in grants awarded to 59 of Chicago’s small arts organizations and arts advocacy organizations in 2024, including its end of year grant cycle. Twenty-one Chicago area arts organizations received multi-year grants of $30,000 or more last year.
Among GDDF’s Chicago arts grantees are nonprofit advocacy organizations the League of Chicago Theatres and Lawyers for the Creative Arts, which were awarded grants of $75,000. Additional Chicago Artistic Vitality grantees include Natya Dance Theatre ($40,500), See Chicago Dance ($40,500), Segundo Ruiz Belvis Cultural Center ($40,500), Silk Road Rising ($40,500), Definition Theatre Company ($36,000), and Shattered Globe Theatre ($36,000). Arts organizations receiving grants of $30,000 include Asian Improv aRts Midwest, Chicago Dancemakers Forum, Ensemble Dal Niente, Kalapriya, Lucky Plush Productions, Mandala South Asian Performing Arts, Rivendell Theatre Ensemble, Steep Theatre Company, the Newberry Consort, and Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art.
The Gaylord and Dorothy Donnelley Foundation supports land conservation, artistic vitality, and regional collections for the people of the Chicago region and the Lowcountry of South Carolina. The foundation seeks to sustain and build resilient, vital, engaged, and equitable communities in these two regions by supporting conservation, arts, and collecting organizations that broaden narratives.
NEW YORK CITY: The Kleban Foundation has announced the recipients of the 35th annual Kleban Prize for Musical Theatre, naming Benjamin Velez the most promising musical theatre lyricist and Madeline Myers the most promising musical theatre librettist. The Kleban Foundation will present the prizes on Feb. 3 in a private ceremony hosted by ASCAP and BMI and emceed by Tony winners and Kleban board members Richard Maltby Jr. and Maury Yeston, with musical performances from work by this year’s prize recipients.
Benjamin Velez is a composer/lyricist born and raised in Miami, whose musical Borderline opened the 2019 Musical Theater Conference. He was a 2018 Dramatist Guild Foundation Fellow, the 2019 Fred Ebb Award Winner, a 2020 Thom Thomas Award winner, a 2020 Jonathan Larson Grant recipient, and 2023 winner of the Stephen Schwartz Award. His musical Kiss My Aztec, written with John Leguizamo, Tony Taccone, and David Kamp, was developed at the Public Theater (2018), before premiering at Berkeley Rep (2019), and playing at the La Jolla Playhouse (2019) and Hartford Stage (2022). His Public Works musical of The Tempest, directed by Laurie Woolery, premiered at the Delacorte Theater in August 2023. Real Women Have Curves, a collaboration with Joy Huerta (of Jesse Y Joy), Lisa Loomer, and Nell Benjamin, directed by Sergio Trujillo, premiered at the American Repertory Theater in December 2023 and will open on Broadway this April.
Madeline Myers is a musical theatre composer and lyricist in New York City whose musicals include Double Helix (Bay Street Theater, 2023), Flatbush Avenue (UNC-Greensboro commission, 2021), and The Devil’s Apprentice (world premiere Copenhagen, Denmark, 2018). Madeline is currently working on several new musical projects. Named to the 2022 Broadway Women’s Fund “Women to Watch on Broadway” list, Madeline is a 2023 & 2022 Kleban Prize finalist for lyric writing; a winner of the 2021 Billie Burke Ziegfeld Award presented by New York Stage & Film and the Ziegfeld Club; a Jonathan Larson Grant finalist (2017-2020); a 2019 York Theatre Company NEO Writer; an ASCAP Plus Award recipient (2017-2023); and a 2016-2017 Dramatists Guild Fellow.
Since its inception, Kleban Prize winners have been selected by judging panels comprised of the theatre’s most respected artists and administrators. The trio of celebrated judges making the final determination this year were choreographer Raja Feather Kelly, designer Clint Ramos, and producer Rachel Sussman.
The Kleban Foundation was established in 1988 under the will of Edward L. Kleban, best known as the Tony- and Pulitzer-winning lyricist of the musical A Chorus Line. Kleban’s will made provisions for annual prizes, which in recent years have totaled $100,000 each, payable over two years, to be given to the most promising lyricist and the most promising librettist in American musical theatre. For 35 years, the Kleban Prize has recognized and honored some of the American musical theatre’s brightest developing talents.
Over more than three decades, the annual Kleban Prize for Musical Theatre has awarded over $6,000,000 to 85 artists who collectively have garnered nine Tony Awards (and nearly 30 Tony nominations), 59 Emmy Awards, three Grammy Awards, 11 Drama Desk Awards, 11 Outer Critic Circle Awards, five Obie Awards, two Olivier Awards, and two Pulitzer Prizes. The application window for the 2026 Kleban Prize is March 17-May 15.
NEW YORK CITY: Theatre East board of directors has announced Tim Blake Nelson as the recipient of the 2025 Laurette Taylor Award. The awards ceremony takes place at 7 p.m. on Monday, Jan. 20 at Court Square Theater.
Tim Blake Nelson is a storyteller and a steadfast supporter of Theatre East. With a career spanning both stage and screen, he has captivated audiences in films like O Brother, Where Art Thou?, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, Old Henry, and Leaves of Grass—the latter of which he also wrote and directed. He also will be seen in the upcoming Captain America: Brave New World. As a playwright, his works—including Eye of God, The Grey Zone, and Socrates—delve deeply into the human condition. His directorial projects, including O, The Grey Zone, Anesthesia, and Eye of God, further showcase his relentless curiosity and compassion in exploring the complexities and turbulence of humanity.
The Laurette Taylor Award takes its name from a pioneer of acting whose work on the stage influenced generations of artists. Theatre East founded the award in 2009 to pay tribute to the exceptional artistic contributions of this often overlooked warrior and to honor those industry members who have made vital contributions, onstage or off-. Theatre East is a nonprofit theatre company whose mission is to provide the community with a platform to deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world we share through works of theatre that utilize simple storytelling.
NEW YORK CITY: The Dramatists Guild Foundation (DGF) has announced Gloria Oladipo as the recipient of the 2024 Thom Thomas Award, given annually to an alumnus of the DGF fellows program who demonstrates great artistic skill.
The award commemorates playwright Thom Thomas’s endless passion for nurturing the next generation of dramatists and his appreciation of DGF’s support of writers. The recipient is granted $10,000 to use toward livelihood expenses, project expenses, travel expenses, and anything that will support their ability to create their best work.
Gloria Oladipo is a playwright and critic based in New York (but proudly from Chicago). She writes black comedies about Black families who are generationally unhappy, who do not know how to love each other, but do the very best they can. Gloria is a 2023-2025 Public Theater Emerging Writers Group fellow, a 2025 Velvetpark Writers fellow, a 2022-2023 Dramatists Guild Foundation fellow, and a previous Seven Devils New Play Conference resident. She is the 2023 recipient of the American Theatre Critics Association’s Edward Medina Prize for Excellence in Cultural Criticism. She was a 2022 National Critics Institute Fellow at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center, an opportunity she was selected for via the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival (KCACTF). Gloria’s work has appeared in the Washington Post, The New York Times, The Guardian, American Theatre, and other publications.
Dramatists Guild Foundation (DGF) is a national charity that aims to fuel the future of American theatre by supporting the writers who create it. DGF fosters playwrights, composers, lyricists, and librettists at all stages of their careers. DGF sponsors educational programs; provides awards, grants, and stipends; offers free space to create new works; and gives emergency aid to writers in need of immediate support.
NEW YORK CITY: Page 73 has announced Lori Felipe-Barkin as the recipient of the 2025 Page 73 playwriting fellowship. The fellow receives a $20,000 honorarium in addition to a $10,000 development budget and a year of resources tailored to their needs.
Lori Felipe-Barkin is a playwright, performer, and voiceover artist based out of NYC and Miami who works in English and Spanish. Most recently, her short play The Peepholeman premiered at BAM as part of the 2024 Weasel Festival. Her three-act play Flor Underwater was selected for the 2020 Play Penn New Play Conference, received an Honorable Mention for the 2021 Terrence McNally Award, and was a finalist for the 2023 Risk Theatre Award, the 2023 Austin Film Festival Playwriting Competition, and the 2024 Royer Award. She has had play readings at Playwrights Horizons for Out There in the West, and at INTAR Theatre and Iati Theater for Ama. Egg. Oyá. She holds an MFA in playwriting from Brooklyn College.Additionally, Page 73 has named eight writers to their annual writers group, including the playwriting fellow. These writers receive a $3,000 honorarium and meet throughout the year as they hone their newest pages. They are Lyndsey Bourne, a queer Canadian playwright, teacher, and a birth/abortion doula working with the Doula Project; Adam Ashraf Elsayigh, born in Cairo and raised in Dubai, now a U.S.-based playwright and theatremaker of stage and screenplays; Justin Halle, whose bio describes them as a “queer, Jewy, and sometimes funny playwright, teacher, and pansy”; Ro Reddick, a queer Black playwright and songwriter who write “off-kilter comedies (mostly)”; Danielle Stagger, a playwright and performer from Queens who “prioritizes the authentic presence of Blackness, queerness, and womanhood both on- and offstage; Arun Welandawe-Prematilleke, a Sri Lankan playwright, actor, and director born in Helsinki; and Drew Woodson, a Western Shoshone playwright based in New York City.
Since its founding in 1997, Page 73 has focused on nurturing early-career playwrights and expanding the theatrical canon. The organization has consistently sought to open new pathways to recognition for fresh, urgent, and daring voices, in part by mounting works solely by writers who have not yet had a New York City premiere Off-Broadway. In 2020, the organization was honored with an institutional Obie “for providing extraordinary support for early career playwrights.”
ATLANTA: The Alliance Theatre has announced Xianon “Chloe” Liu as the National Vision, Inc., BIPOC Stage Management Fellow for the 2024-25 season. As a fellow, Liu will work as a contributing member of the stage management department at the Alliance Theatre, as well as afforded the opportunity to develop a network of mentors inside and outside of the Alliance.
Liu, who identifies as a Chinese stage manager, recently graduated from the stage management program at Yale, where her credits include Next to Normal, Green Suga Bloos, The Cherry Orchard, The Alley, and Twelfth Night, as well as Choir Boy and Escaped Alone at Yale Rep. She obtained a BA from Shanghai Theatre Academy and worked on productions in China, including the Shanghai Disney productions of Beauty and The Beast and The Lion King, and the national tours of Man of La Mancha and The Sound of Music.
Support for this program is provided by National Vision, Inc., one of the largest optical retail companies in the United States, with over 1,200 stores in 38 states and Puerto Rico. By sponsoring the 2024-25 BIPOC stage management fellowship program, National Vision is advancing its philanthropic impact to support inclusion while celebrating visibility and representation in the arts in its corporate hometown.
