THEATER LATTÉ DA TO RECEIVE $20,000 ART WORKS GRANT FROMTHE NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
June 24, 2020
Contact: Elissa Adams
elissa@latteda.org
612-454-4794 office
THEATER LATTÉ DA TO RECEIVE $20,000 ART WORKS GRANT FROM THE NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS
[Minneapolis/St. Paul]—National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Acting Chairman Mary Anne Carter has approved more than $84 million in grants as part of the Arts Endowment’s second major funding announcement for fiscal year 2020. Included in this announcement is an Art Works grant of $20,000 to Theater Latté Da for the development of an English language adaptation of Giacomo Puccini’s comic opera, GIANNI SCHICCHI, by Twin Cities-based writer-performers Bradley Greenwald and Steven Epp, and support for the company’s 2021 NEXT Festival, of which GIANNI SCHICCHI is slated to be a part. Art Works is the Arts Endowment’s principal grantmaking program. In this second round of grantmaking, the agency has awarded 1,105 grants in this category.
"These awards demonstrate the continued creativity and excellence of arts projects across America and the nimbleness of our nation’s arts organizations in the face of a national crisis that shuttered their doors for months," said Mary Anne Carter, chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts.”
“As we embark on NEXT Up, our season-long focus on developing new musicals and plays with music, it’s wonderful to have this support from the NEA. It will help us continue to provide direct support to artists and it validates our decision to use this time to invest in work for the future,” said Elissa Adams, Associate Artistic Director at Theater Latté Da.
New work has always been a part of Theater Latté Da’s DNA. Since 2012, the company has further prioritized the support of new musicals and plays with music through the NEXT program including commissions, workshops, the NEXT Festival, and of course world premieres. Funding from the NEA will support the 2021 NEXT Festival, scheduled for July 2021.
Theater Latté Da recently began a new chapter of new works development with their recently launched initiative, NEXT Up. The intensive new works laboratory will invest in new musical theater through commissions and developmental workshops. GIANNI SCHICCHI is one of eight projects for development announced as part of Theater Latté Da’s NEXT Up initiative for the 2020-2021 Season.
GIANNI SCHICCHI is a one-act opera, the third and final part of Puccini’s Il Trittico, based on an incident mentioned in Dante’s DIVINE COMEDY. The original Italian libretto by Giovacchino Forzano is a farce about greed and hypocrisy set in Florence in 1299. Twin Cities actor-writers Bradley Greenwald and Steven Epp will be working with Theater Latté Da’s Associate Artistic Director in resetting the opera in modern day Miami.
"I've wanted to create a new adaptation of Puccini's great comic opera for some time. I think Bradley and Steve are the perfect team to do so; they are both brilliant comedic actors and writers who have a long history of creating dynamic music-theater. I can't wait to see what they come up with,” shares Founding Artistic Director Peter Rothstein.
Theater Latté Da presents an annual NEXT Festival, a new works festival showcasing three works that stretch the boundaries of musical storytelling. Each new work-in-development in the Festival receives public performances providing audience members the opportunity to get in on the ground floor of the creative process. Following each performance is an in-depth conversation with the playwrights, composers, and lyricists.
For more information on this National Endowment for the Arts grant announcement, visit arts.gov/news.
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