Ten theatre artists, including playwrights Kia Corthron and Ayad Akhtar, were among 74 creative people in seven disciplines who won fellowships from The MacDowell Colony in New Hampshire.
The fellows will take part in residencies at the artist colony. In addition to Akhtar (2013 Pulitzer Prize winner for Disgraced) and Corthron (Life by Asphyxiation, A Cool Dip in the Barren Saharan Crick), new MacDowell theatre Fellows include Philip Dawkins, Dominic Finocchiaro, Madeleine George, Keelay Gipson, Carson Kreitzer, Ruby Spiegel, Francine Volpe, Catherine Yu, and Zack Zadek.
Fellows from other disciplines include Academy Award-winning screenwriter Charlie Kaufman and eight-time Grammy nominee and jazz composer Fred Hersch. They will join colleagues in the fields of architecture, music composition, film and video, poetry, fiction and non-fiction writing, and visual and interdisciplinary arts.
The fellowships, each with an average value of $10,000, were awarded from among a pool of 732 applications received between July and September 2016. A panel of professionals in each discipline picked Fellows based solely on their talent, and Fellows are provided a private studio for a period of up to eight weeks, accommodations, and three meals a day.
Executive director Cheryl A. Young released a statement saying, “From playwrights Kia Corthron, Madeline George, and Ayad Akhtar to visual artists like Michael Waugh and Paul Anthony Smith, MacDowell Fellows will be given the time, space, and support to pursue new works that often end up as exemplars of contemporary art.”
