The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) announced today that Northwest Arkansas’s theatre has been selected for two grant programs, supporting the 2022 Arkansas New Play Festival and, through the American Rescue Plan, to assist in the company’s ongoing efforts to chart a path past the COVID-19 crisis.
"Support from the NEA is crucial," said Martin Miller, Executive Director. "TheatreSquared is thrilled to have this important support for our state’s leading laboratory for bold new plays, and to help lay the foundation for Northwest Arkansas’s theatre to emerge even stronger from the ongoing challenges posed by the pandemic, " said Martin Miller, Executive Director.
The Grants for Arts Projects award is designated to support the upcoming Arkansas New Play Festival and marks eleven consecutive years that the company has received support for new works from the NEA. T2’s Arkansas New Play Festival has helped incubate more than 60 plays. The playwright-focused festival links authors with a director, dramaturg, and professional cast for an intensive two- to three-week laboratory process, culminating in staged reading performances. Staged readings have been held in venues throughout Fayetteville, Bentonville, Little Rock, and streamed online.
Through the Arkansas New Play Festival, TheatreSquared seeks to give voice to playwrights whose timely and relevant stories resonate with the moment we live in—in Arkansas, in mid-America, and as a nation.
The Arkansas New Play Festival is one project among 1,248 across America that were selected to receive this first round of fiscal year 2022 funding in the Grants for Arts Projects category.
Additionally, TheatreSquared is thrilled to receive additional support in the form of an American Rescue Plan award. This grant was created to help the arts and cultural sector recover from the pandemic. TheatreSquared will use this funding to save jobs and to fund operations and facilities, health and safety supplies, and marketing and promotional efforts to encourage attendance and participation. Through this program, the NEA awarded grants totaling $57,750,000 to 567 arts organizations in all 50 states, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and Washington, DC.
"Our nation’s arts sector has been among the hardest hit by the COVID-19 pandemic. The National Endowment for the Arts’ American Rescue Plan funding will help arts organizations, such as TheatreSquared, rebuild," said Dr. Maria Rosario Jackson, chair of the NEA. "The arts are crucial in helping America’s communities heal, unite, and inspire, as well as essential to our nation’s economic recovery."
The combined grants total $180,000.
For more information on the NEA’s American Rescue Plan grants, including the full list of arts organizations funded in this announcement, visit www.arts.gov/COVID-19/the-american-rescue-plan.
For more information on other projects included in the Arts Endowment grant announcements, visit www.arts.gov/news.
About TheatreSquared
TheatreSquared’s signature offering of bold new plays in an intimate setting has driven its growth to become the state’s largest theatre, offering more than 350 performances annually in two intimate spaces and online. The playwright-led company is one of mid-America’s leading laboratories for new work, having launched more than 60 new plays. Notable collaborators have included Bryna Turner, Anne García-Romero, Pulitzer Prize finalist Lisa D’Amour, Qui Nguyen, Mona Mansour, Tony Award nominee Lee Blessing, Amy Evans, and many others. TheatreSquared’s remarkable expansion—with a twentyfold increase in audience in just the past decade—parallels the emergence of its home region in the northwest corner of Arkansas as a booming population center and destination for American art. Offering far-reaching access and education programs and an open-all-day gathering space, The Commons Bar/Café, TheatreSquared remains rooted in its founding vision, that "theatre—done well and with passion—can transform lives and communities."
Major funding for the TheatreSquared Season 16 is provided by The Walton Family Foundation, Inc.; the Walmart Foundation; the Arkansas Arts Council, an agency of the Arkansas Department of Parks, Heritage, and Tourism, and the National Endowment for the Arts; the National Endowment for the Arts; the Tyson Family Foundation; the Windgate Foundation; the John & Robyn Horn Foundation; the Shubert Foundation; Simmons Foods; Bob and Becky Alexander; Jane Hunt; the Frances Lee Scott Estate; and Barbara Shadden.
Marketing support for TheatreSquared Season 16 is provided by Experience Fayetteville, the Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Fayetteville Flyer, 3W Magazine, CitiScapes, KUAF, MailCo USA and Univision.