The Creation Fund is a unique program which leverages resources for artists towards the creation of a new work and ensures a minimum of a two-site tour.

NPN is happy to announce that 11 exciting projects have been awarded for the Summer FY09 Creation Fund cycle.

Artist:  Cloud Eye Control (Los Angeles, CA)
Lead Partner/Commissioners:  REDCAT (CalArts, Los Angeles), Portland Institute for Contemporary Arts (Portland, OR)
Title:  "Polar Ice"
Description:  "Polar Ice" will be a blend of projected animation, live theater and music that combine to tell the tale of a woman who inexplicably emerges from a block of glacial ice. Featuring four separate interactive video projections of digital animation layered onto two-dimensional surfaces, three-dimensional sculptures, the floor and the bodies of the performers themselves, the result will be a theatrical hybrid of screen and stage that creates an immersive multimedia world.
Award:  $10,000

Artist:  Queer Exchange (Valley Village, CA)
Lead Partner/Commissioners:  Highways Performance Space (Santa Monica, CA), Sushi Performance and Visual Art (San Diego, CA)
Title:  "Fringes-Margins-Borders"
Description:  Queer Exchange, a performance collective of six LGBT artists who deliberately question commonly held beliefs about feminism, biology, multiculturalism, race, gender, age, sexual identity and explore separatists philosophies through a spectrum of performance and literary practices, will create and present "Fringes-Margins-Borders," a multidisciplinary performance of six original, 15-minute, autobiographical works that will be shaped into a compelling, linearly cohesive production.
Award:  $10,000

Artist:  Ruby Nelda Perez (San Antonio, TX)
Lead Partner/Commissioners:  Jump-Start Performance Co. (San Antonio), Teatro de la Esperanza (San Francisco, CA)
Title:  "Chavela & Her Three Husbands"
Description:  The creation of a new one-woman play titled "Chavela & Her Three Husbands, A Woman’s Journey through the Chicano Movement."
Award:  $10,000

Artist:  Mondo Bizarro (New Orleans, LA)
Lead Partner/Commissioners:  Junebug Productions, Inc. (New Orleans), Appalshop (Whitesburg, KY), Turner World Around Productions (Raymond, MS)
Title:  "Race Peace"
Description:  "Race Peace" is a cross-generational performance work about the debilitating fog of racism. The work provides an opportunity for people to celebrate and explore common bonds, debate their differences, and lay the civic foundation to pursue solutions to their problems. This project aims to create safe spaces where communities can honestly and aggressively explore the realities and myths of racism in America.
Award:  $12,000

Artist:  Ariel Luckey (Oakland, CA)
Lead Partner/Commissioners:  La Peña Cultural Center (Berkeley, CA), Matrix Center/While Privilege Conference (Colorado Springs, CO)
Title:  "Free Land"
Description:  "Free Land" is a dynamic hip hop theater solo show written and performed by Ariel Luckey, directed by Margo Hall and scored by Ryan Luckey.  The show follows a young white man’s search for his roots as it takes him from the streets of Oakland to the prairies of Wyoming on an unforgettable journey into the heart of American history.  "Free Land" challenges us to take an unflinching look at the truth buried in the land beneath our feet.
Awards:  $10,000

Artist:  So Percussion (Brooklyn, NY)
Lead Partner/Commissioners:  Myrna Loy Center/Helena Presents (Helena, MT), Flynn Center for the Performing Arts (Burlington, VT), DiverseWorks (Houston, TX), Newman Center for the Performing Arts (Denver, CO), The cleveland Museum of Art (Cleveland, OH)
Title:  "Imaginary City"
Description:  "Imaginary City" will be an evening length work comprised of the music of So Percussion and film from video artist Jenise Treuting.  The work will explore the various ways that depictions of cities past and present often collide with the the myriad faces that any one city can contain.  Utilization of sounds and images from the particular cities involved in the commission will be an integral part of this process.
Award:  $16,000

Artist:  Universes (Bronx, NY)
Lead Partner/Commissioners:  New WORLD Theater/University of Massachusetts (Amherst, MA), Myrna Loy Center/Helena Presents (Helena, MT)
Title:  "Ameriville"
Description:  "Ameriville" is a cross-disciplinary, bi-lingual, multimedia exploration of what it means to be an American in the post-9/11 world – a world of terror-level color codes, government misinformation policy and media-fed xenophobia. "Ameriville" is created and performed by Universes, one of the nation’s foremost ensembles working in the field of New Aesthetics and directed by the celebrated director and playwright Chay Yew.
Award:  $10,000

Artist:  tEEth (Portland, OR)
Lead Partner/Commissioners:  On the Boards (Seattle, WA), Refraction Arts|FUSE Box Festival
Title:  "Grub"
Description:  "Grub," a full evening of contemporary dance theatre, explores the complexities, oddities, and layers of group dynamics, human relationships, and the relationship to self.
Award:  $10,000

Artist:  Cynthia Oliver (Urbana, IL)
Lead Partner/Commissioners:  Painted Bride Art Center (Philadelphia, PA), Central District Forum for Arts & Ideas (Seattle, WA), Dance Place (Washington, DC), Bates Dance Festival (Lewiston, ME), Danspace Project, Inc. (New York,NY)
Title:  "Rigidigidim de Bamba de:  Ruptured Calypso"
Description: "Rigidigidim De Bamba De: Ruptured Calypso" is an evening-length multidisciplinary dance theatre project on the nature of calypso dancing as an agent of Afro-Anglo Caribbean identity across geographical, national and aesthetic borders. A meditation on "rupture" as a defining feature of calypso performance, "Rigidigidim" places performers from the Caribbean diaspora in positions between real and imagined borders that force them to navigate their Caribbeanness via calypso.
Award:  $16,000

Artist:  A Street Theater Named Desire (Cambridge, MA)
Lead Partner/Commissioners:  The Theater Offensive (Cambridge, MA), Flynn Center for the Performing Arts (Burlington, VT), Camposition-Hybrid/Theater/Works (Miami, FL)
Title:  "X-uality"
Description:  "X-uality" is a touring performance event to mark the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall riots with a celebration of diverse queer sexualities. "X-uality" will be created under the leadership of A Street Theater Named Desire with input from numerous queer artists from around the country. Wherever it tours, local performances may be integrated into the piece.
Award:  $12,000

Artist:  May Lee-Yang (St. Paul, MN)
Lead Partner/Commissioners:  Out North (Anchorage, AK), Kaotic Good Productions (Minneapolis, MN)
Title:  "Sia(b)"
Description:  In this two-woman show, May Lee-Yang tells her personal story of feeling silenced as a Hmong woman living in the U.S., and how she seeks a balance between Hmong culture and American pop culture. Yang will develop the piece by working with the Hmong communities in Minnesota and Alaska. Robert Karimi is helping to develop the script and will direct the production, which will star May Lee Yang and actress Katie Vang as the two sides of Yang’s personality.
Award:  $10,000