The 2009 MAP Fund online application is now open for registration.  Please keep in mind the following eligibility requirements:

• Applications must come from organizations based in the United States that have current nonprofit federal tax status - 501(c)(3). Artists or ensembles without 501(c)(3) status may apply to MAP through a fiscal sponsor.
• Organizations and artists must demonstrate at least 2 years professional experience.
• MAP supports only projects that contain a live performance.
• Eligible projects must not have premiered anywhere in the world before September 1, 2009.
• The touring or documentation of work that has already premiered is not eligible for funding.
• MAP does not fund projects whose main purpose is educational, for example art-in-the-schools or artistic training programs.
• Artists who are full-time students in degree granting programs at the time of application are not eligible.
• MAP does not fund organizations’ general operating expenses.
• MAP does not fund festivals or contests.
• Current employees or board members of Creative Capital, the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation or the Rockefeller Foundation, or immediate family members of such persons are not eligible.
• Artists who were MAP Fund recipients in 2007 and 2008 may apply again in 2010.

MAP supports most direct costs related to the conception, creation and premiere of a new work. These include but are not limited to commissioning fees and artists’ salaries, research costs, rehearsal and workshop expenses, promotion, and audience outreach and production costs up to and including the premiere run of the work.

To read more about the guidelines, visit http://www.mapfund.org/apply.html.  If you’re a fiscally sponsored project of Fractured Atlas and are interested in applying, please contact our staff at support@fracturedatlas.org.  The final day to register for the MAP fund through Fractured Atlas is December 31st.

Founded in 2001, Stone Soup Theatre Arts creates collaborative work based on relevant social issues. Each season, the company chooses a theme and begins with a published work, usually by an international playwright.  The season culminates in a collaboratively-created piece based on research, workshops and travel.

Stone Soup gets its name from the Grimms Brothers’ tale about a town that comes together, with what little sustenance they have, to create a magical meal.  Managing director Leigh Goldenberg says, “Our company is always looking for contributors — artistic collaborators or audience members — to our pot!  This means anyone who wants to join in the conversation and bring a little something with them…”

Recently, we talked shop (soup?) with Leigh and artistic director Nadine Friedman…

Who or what are your biggest influences?

The founding members of Stone Soup Theatre Arts were moved by the work of the Group Theatre — its collaborative nature and socially significant work.  Now, our influences are less often particular styles of theatre; we focus more on what is inspiring in current events. If we can’t stop talking about something, and feel our audience shouldn’t either, then we know we have to find or create a play about it.

What has been your greatest success to date?

Our production of Elie Wiesel’s “The Trial of God” was a big turning point for the company, and probably our most significant success. The play was artistically challenging, both in the text and our approach to the casting. We were proud to receive our most substantial press for this piece, which brought in an incredibly diverse audience for us. Having Chasidic Jews in the audience watch a black woman onstage playing a rabbi was completely unforgettable. “The Trial of God” also furthered our company’s mission by uniting us with five other Off-Off Broadway companies to produce “The UnConvention,” an artistic protest to the Republican National Convention in NYC in 2004. The entire festival felt vital and relevant and we were lucky to work with our peers to create a cohesive, provocative statement.

Stone Soup has been a member of Fractured Atlas since 2003. How do you use your membership?

Primarily, we use Fractured Atlas (FA) as our fiscal sponsor, which has been invaluable. We use the donation history tool [that comes with fiscal sponsorship] as a fund-raising database. We have also gotten general liability insurance through Fractured Atlas, and special offers that are available to FA members, such as discounted publicity work from Wise Elephant. We regularly check the FA website to see what our peers are up to. We have found the events calendar to be an incredible resource to attract like-minded artists to our master classes and audition workshops. And our company members are also excited about taking courses on Fractured U!

Finish this sentence: “A world without art is …”

“…unrevealed!”

What’s ahead for Stone Soup?

We are currently in the planning stages for our 8th season — Diagnosing the Present — an exploration of healthcare. We plan to produce two plays in repertory in Spring 2009, one original and one previously published. We are also continuing our workshop series this November and hosting a gala in December.

How can we learn more about Stone Soup’s offerings?

We welcome everyone to join our artists in our Souped Up Sundays Master Class workshops this November, or to attend our annual benefit on December 6th. These are casual ways to meet company members and see how we operate.  We also throw unusual fundraisers ranging from bingo picnics to dog beauty pageants!

Our website, www.stonesoupkitchen.org, has background on the company, details about upcoming events, and our e-newsletter sign-up.

New York-based Small Pond Entertainment is an emerging theatre arts organization that was started five years ago by artistic director Michael Roderick when he found that it was virtually impossible for an artist to be at their best when they also had to produce.  In this interview with Fractured Atlas, Michael elaborates on his organization’s mission, tells us what’s ahead, and explains what goes into making a “Hot Cripple”…

Michael, tell us more about Small Pond Entertainment’s mission and work.

Small Pond Entertainment seeks to help artists who are developing work by providing producing services, enabling the artist to focus on their art.  We assist the artist by general managing the production, helping to find donors, and helping them budget.  We do this while teaching the artist all about producing so that they can go on and do it themselves someday.

What has been your greatest success to date?

I would have to say this summer’s sold-out productions: “Sleeper” at Manhattan Theatre Source, “The Director’s Reality” at the Midtown International Theatre Festival, and “Hot Cripple”.

Tell us more about “Hot Cripple”:  How did it come about?

“Hot Cripple” came from a chance meeting with the writer/actress Hogan Gorman at an after party for another show we produced, “Liberty and Joe DiMaggio”.  Hogan told me that she had a story and she’d eventually be looking for a producer.  She emailed me when it got accepted into FringeNYC, but her invite ended up getting buried under a mountain of other emails.  Luckily, a mutual friend forwarded me her need for a producer the day before the paperwork was due and she came running down to the school where I work and signed me on.

It seems that with “Hot Cripple” you really accomplished your mission of providing production assistance so that artists can better focus on their art: at the 2008 New York International Fringe Festival, the one-woman show garnered actor/playwright Hogan Gorman the festival’s Overall Excellence Award for “Outstanding Actor”.

What did you expect (or want) your audience to experience during the performance and to take away after they leave?

My hope for the piece was that the story would get the audience talking about the current U.S. healthcare system and open up a dialogue about how poorly people are treated when they don’t have health insurance.  I like finding really good stories that get people to talk.

You’ve been a member of Fractured Atlas since 2004. How did you find out about our organization?  What motivated you to become a member?

A friend of mine was running a theatre company called Prophecy Productions, which was a sponsored project of Fractured Atlas.  He explained to me how fiscal sponsorship worked and I went on the website to check it out.  When I saw how informative the site was and how much support the organization provided, I decided to sign up then and there.

Finish this sentence: “The artist’s role in society is to…”

“…to lead people to ask questions. To challenge the norm and refute the dominant ideology. The artist is there to turn on the lights when it’s hard to see the art.”

Who or what are your biggest influences?

Our biggest influences come from the theatre community, the public, Playwrights Horizons, Ken Davenport, as well as many other companies and producers.

What’s next on Small Pond Entertainment’s horizon?

We are currently running a monthly comedy series that splits all proceeds with indie theatre companies; I am currently writing a blog for people interested in producing on the ground level; and we have a show coming up in January 2009 called “Dead Pan”, which is also quite thought-provoking.  And we continue to help as many artists as we can with networking events and development opportunities.

How can we read/experience/learn more about you and your organization’s work?

You can always check out my blog, http://oneproducerinthecity.typepad.com/, or take a look at the Small Pond website: www.smallpondentertainment.com.

Images:
Top: Michael Roderick, Artistic Director, Small Pond Entertainment. Photo by Erica Singleton.
Middle: Promo image for “Hot Cripple”. Hogan Gorman, Playwright, Actor.
Bottom: Images from “Proof by Disproof” (July 2006). Pictured: Craig Anthony Grant, Christopher Beier (top) and Nell Casey.

Name: Cara Winter
Website: www.carawinter.net
Hometown: New York, NY
Artistic Disciplines: writing, acting
Fractured Atlas Member Since: February 2002
Fractured Atlas Services Used: Fiscal Sponsorship, Health Insurance, Liability Insurance

Cara, tell us about your work in a few sentences.

For about a decade, my focus was on performing, and I worked and toured all over the country.  But I’ve always written, on the side.  I am often inspired by the work I’m doing as an actress; for instance, I wrote two children’s plays while teaching acting to children, and wrote a play about an alcoholic while on tour with… well, you get the picture.  Last summer, my first play, “Social Work”, was picked up and produced by the Manhattan Repertory Theatre; and I have three more adult plays, all in-progress: “Poker Face”, “Seeds”, and “Alan Alda sat next to me on a park bench”.

Who/what are your biggest influences?

David Auburn, Aaron Sorkin, and Amy Sherman-Palladino are my major writing influences.

What has been your greatest success to date?

As a performer, it would have to be playing to a packed Fox Theatre in St. Louis.  Incredible.   As a writer, it was when “Social Work” was produced at the Manhattan Repertory Theatre.  The actors were amazing, the director and co-producer were incomparable.  Then the “aftermath” of the play’s success was SO cool:  several requests came in from development types to read the play (one at the Public, one at the Flea, as well as a film producer).  It was an incredible experience, and I learned so much.

How do you use your Fractured Atlas membership?

Fractured Atlas has helped me to obtain liability insurance (when I produced a short film), fund-raise and promote my production/s, and network with other artists.  For a while, though, the most important aspect of my association with Fractured Atlas was access to health care.  Last August we welcomed our first child into the world (a son, Avery), so having good health coverage was a priority.  My husband is also a freelancer, so he doesn’t have coverage through an employer.  Without FA, I’m not sure what we’d have done!  Glad I didn’t have to think about that.

Finish this sentence: A world without art is…

lonely.

How can we see/hear/read/experience/learn more about your work?

Whenever I’m in production with a piece, I usually send my blurb to Fractured Atlas’s community calendar.  I also have recent news on my own website: www.carawinter.net

Images:
Top: “Social Work” by Cara Winter at Manhattan Repertory Theatre;
Catherine Gowl as “Margaret” and Stas May as “Geoff”.  Photo by N. Warren Winter.

Bottom: Cara Winter as The Ghost of Christmas Past, with Cork Ramer as Scrooge; National Tour of “A Christmas Carol”.

A one-day workshop for non-conformist performers determined to take their vision from the page to the stage. The workshop will feature a panel discussion with notable actors and writers who have seen their work produced On or Off-Broadway, and break-out groups that will provide instrumental tools to seeing one´s work produced: development, budgeting, fundraising, marketing, and more.

Presented by TeatroStageFest, HOLA, and CUNY Grad Center in association with CUNY and Instituto Cervantes.  An official event of the 2008 NYC Latin American Cultural Week.

When:  Saturday, November 8, 2008; 10:00 am - 4:00 pm

Where:  Martin E. Segal Theatre Center; CUNY Graduate Center; 365 Fifth Avenue at 34th Street

Free admission

Prior reservation required.  Reservation and Information: info@teatrostagefest.org or 212.695.4010

Schedule:

10:00 am -12:00 noon: Produce-Yourself, Introduction to Artist Driven Projects

12:00 noon - 1:30 pm: Networking Lunch.

1:30 pm - 3:00 pm:  Group discussions led by industry professionals focusing on development, identifying producers and partners, budgeting and fundraising, and public relations and marketing.

The New York Innovative Theater Foundation is currently conducting a demographic survey of theater artists producing in the off-off Broadway (OOB) community. Since they need about 6000 responses, I wanted to pass this along and encourage people to participate! The survey should only take about 4 minutes to complete and you can find it here.

They ALSO just published a statistical analysis of OOB production budgets which presents some fascinating information (for example: the largest % of productions had budgets of below $5000!). I would recommend it as a must-read for anyone in or out of NYC who is considering self-producing in the OOB community (which is often where many independent artists & emerging companies start out). Survey results can be found here.

I would be interested to hear how their findings compare to markets outside New York. Any members outside NYC care to comment on that?

I just want to send a public congratulatory note to Back House Productions, a longtime Fractured Atlas organizational member, on the incredible success of In the Heights, the new Broadway show that won the coveted Best Musical award (also Best Score, Best Choreography, and Best Orchestrations) at the Tony Awards on Sunday. The show’s director, Thomas Kail (who was Tony-nominated for his direction), the artistic director of Back House Productions (BHP), is a former member of Fractured Atlas. BHP originally developed In the Heights a few years back and continues to produce great work. I had the pleasure of seeing the show recently in its Broadway incarnation and it’s a terrific, unique, energetic, and completely enjoyable musical.

Benjamin Salka, a producer at BHP, is a current member of Fractured Atlas and has used our Liability Insurance program to obtain insurance for some of BHP’s productions.

Fractured Atlas congratulates Back House Productions and all of the cast, crew, and creative team of In the Heights! We’re glad that we can say we’ve played at least a [very] small role in both BHP’s and In the Heights‘ success.

Name: Kathryn Blume
Website: www.kathrynblume.com
Hometown: Charlotte, VT
Artistic Discipline: Theater/Performance Art
Fractured Atlas Member Since: October 2004
Fractured Atlas Services Used: Fiscal Sponsorship, Liability Insurance

Today, we’re featuring Kathryn Blume, a solo performer who is “trying to create entertaining, relevant, and (hopefully) personally and politically inspiring work.” Currently, Blume is touring her new show The Boycott around the country. The Boycott is the story of the First Lady of the United States, who launches a nationwide sex strike to fight global warming and save the world. NYtheatre.com said of The Boycott, “This is smart, clever, funny, entertaining theatre that makes political activism appealingly cool while unabashedly striving to make it part of the everyday fabric of life again… As a vehicle for its writer and star, The Boycott is a tour-de-force that shows Blume off as a versatile and highly imaginative talent…. Blume’s fluid, high-energy performance makes what she accomplishes here look like the easiest thing in the world. She possesses great comic timing, and is immensely endearing.”

Blume is one of Fractured Atlas’ long-time fiscal sponsees (and one of our most successful!). She has been a Fractured Atlas member since 2004.

We asked Kathryn a few questions about her work….

What/who are your biggest influences?
Kathryn’s influences include Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, Tony Kushner; performance artist Heather Woodbury; co-artistic director of Theatre Askew, Jason Jacobs; and folk singer Pete Seeger.

What have been your greatest successes to date?
One of Kathryn’s greatest successes was co-founding The Lysistrata Project. Working with Sharron Bower, in March 2003, Kathryn managed to help produce over 1,000 readings of Lysistrata in all 50 states and in 59 countries. This project was created to “protest our impending war on Iraq.” As Kathryn says of the incredibly successful project, “There’s no way to sum up the multitude of ways that event changed my life.” A more recent success involves the aforementioned The Boycott, which Kathryn brought to New York for a run in October 2007. One of the high points of the run included “having the Natural Resources Defense Council buy out the house for a major donor night…. [That was] a running-with-the-big-dogs moment if there ever was one.”

Finish this sentence: The artist’s role in society is….
“…. to both acknowledge the world as it is, and imagine the world as it could be.”

How can we see, experience, or learn more about your work?
Beyond her personal site (www.kathrynblume.com), Kathryn is on tour with The Boycott currently. You can check the show’s touring schedule on its website — www.theboycottplay.com — or you can even contact Kathryn and bring the show to your area!

Name: Matthew Hislope, Rubber Repertory
Website: www.rubberrep.org
Hometown: Austin, TX
Artistic Discipline: Theater
Fractured Atlas Member Since: November 2006
Fractured Atlas Services Used: Fiscal Sponsorship

Today, we’re featuring Rubber Repertory, an Austin-based theater company run by member Matthew Hislope and Josh Meyer. As Hislope describes, a typical Rubber Rep show “is low budget and high risk — full of artful excess, uncanny images, the use of non-traditional performers, and at least a little music and dance. We like to create work that messes with conventions and expands an audience’s capacity for experience. Our best work often comes from ideas that seem destined to fail.” Rubber Rep likes to blur the lines between art and life, high culture and low, and the amateurish and masterful.

With the help of Fractured Atlas’ Fiscal Sponsorship program, Rubber Rep applied for and received a MAP Fund grant in 2007. Rubber Rep, along with the Nature Theater of Oklahoma, was one of the first Fractured Atlas sponsees to be awarded this prestigious grant.

We asked Matt a few questions about his company and its work….

What/who are your biggest influences?
“Anthony Howell’s An Analysis of Performance Art; outsiders and artists-in-decline; the assorted geniuses we’ve been lucky enough to work with in Austin, such as Deborah Hay, Dan Basila, Wallace Shawn, and Dick Price; [and] the Judy Garlands of the world who perform like it’s a matter of life and death.”

What have been your greatest successes to date?
“After years of trying to secure the rights, our U.S. Premiere of Wallace Shawn’s A Thought in Three Parts was the biggest hit in the 20-year history of the theater in which it was performed (The Vortex). The Austin Chronicle declared it the “Best show of the year, without question.” We toured the production to Marfa, Texas, and are now looking for a presenter in New York City.”

On a side note, the author of this profile had the pleasure of seeing A Thought in Three Parts during its run in Austin. Not only was the show the talk of the town, with feature stories in most local papers, but it was one of the most memorable pieces of theater I had seen in 2007 (if not in the past 10 years!).

Finish this sentence: A world without art is….
“…. just restaurants and toilets.”

How can we see, experience, or learn more about your work?
Rubber Rep’s website, www.rubberrep.org, features information about upcoming and past productions, as well as the theater company’s blog. As Hislope states, “Our most ambitious show to date will premiere in October 2008. Anyone who wants to make the trip can sleep on our couch.” I encourage people to take Matt up on his offer!

Andrew Taylor reports that Elizabeth Streb is rethinking the audience chamber. (Is it cheating to link to the same author in two consecutive posts?)

Elizabeth despises the constraint and construct of the traditional proscenium space. So her studio is a ”come as you are, come when you want, leave when you want, talk if you want” free-for-all — even during what we would usually call a performance. If your phone rings and you want to answer it, answer it. She figures you can decide if the work her dancers are doing is more worthy of your attention. The seats aren’t fixed. There’s popcorn (”the smell of popcorn just makes you happy,” she says). And the building is open whenever any staff is working there (she even encourages public use of the restroom and water fountain, since the city stopped providing such amenities long ago).

In my former life as a theatre director I had an unhealthy obsession with the concept of environmental theatre. I believed (the same way a religious zealot believes things) that the rise of film and television had turned traditional fourth-wall theatre into an irrelevant anachronism. My primary intellectual inspiration was Richard Schechner, who pioneered this kind of work (unless you count the ancient greeks) with The Wooster Group in the late 60s and early 70s.

The problem is, I never actually saw Dionysus in ‘69 or any of Schechner’s other productions. From speaking to folks who did, my understanding is that the ideas behind environmental theatre (at least as practiced by Schechner) were a bit more compelling on the page than on the stage. Certainly they never caught on in any major way, and Schechner himself moved on to other things long ago. At best, these works were appropriate for their time and place (i.e. downtown New York at the peak of the free love era), but lacked any kind of timeless relevance.

Reading about Elizabeth Streb’s studio has me thinking about environment theatre again, but from an altogether simpler, more human, less conceptual standpoint. Her approach seems audience friendly, and very much in sync with the way our culture is headed today. What a great way to be relevant.