NEH Awards NYU's Aquila Theatre Company 800K Grant

Peter Meineck, Artistic Director of the Aquila Theatre Company at NYU's Center for Ancient Studies, today announced that it has received an unprecedented grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, a Chairman's Special Award (the only one for a theater company), of $800,000.00, one of the two largest grants made, to launch its newest program, ANCIENT GREEKS / MODERN LIVES, whose mission is to bring the classics to 100 veteran, inner city and rural communities.
This marks the first-ever theatre and community-based Chairman's Special Award. No other theater company has ever received a grant of this size from the NEH.

"We are thrilled that the NEH is backing this groundbreaking program to develop new audiences and reach out to our veteran community, " said Mr. Meineck.

Ancient Greeks/Modern Lives: Poetry-Drama-Dialogue is a major national humanities program traveling to 100 public libraries and art centers across America focusing on inner-city, rural and underserved communities with a mission to inspire people to come together to read, see, and think about classical literature and how it continues to influence and invigorate American cultural life. This extensive new program unites the assets of the Aquila Theater Company, the Urban Libraries Council (ULC), the American Philological Association (APA), the Center for Ancient Studies at New York University (NYU) and the Harvard Center for Hellenic Studies in Washington DC (CHS) and will take place from May 2010 to April 2013 and will be presented in at least 20 states in communities such as Brooklyn, Harlem, Yorkville, Washington Heights, Queens NY; Memphis and Chattanooga TN; Miami, West Palm Beach, Palm Beach and Tallahassee FL; Columbus GA; Houma and Metairie LA; Houston TX; Topeka and Lawrence KS; Elgin and Skokie IL; Camden NJ; Providence RI; Hartford CT; Portland OR; Marysville and Seattle WA; Saginaw MI; Washington DC; City of Los Angeles, Los Angeles County, San Diego and Kern County CA; Salt Lake County UT; and Tucson AZ. Ancient Greeks/Modern Lives is guided by Peter Meineck, Artistic Director of the Aquila Theater Company and a clinical professor of Classics at New York University, Susan Benton, President of the Urban Libraries Council, Jay Kaplan, Director of Programs and Exhibitions at the Brooklyn Public Library, Dr. Matthew Santirocco, Dean of The College of Arts and Science and Director of the Center for Ancient Studies at NYU, Dr. Judith Hallett, Professor of Classics at University of Maryland and Vice-President for Outreach of the American Philological Association and Dr. Gregory Nagy, Professor of Classics at Harvard University and Director of the Center for Hellenic Studies.

The program is organized around four thematic units:
1) Rites of Passage: Changing Worlds, Transforming Lives.
2) Stranger in a Strange Land: Encountering the Other
3) Homecoming: The Return of the Warrior.
4) From Homer to Hip Hop: The Art of Storytelling.

These units will explore significant humanities themes that investigate the connections between classical literature and contemporary America to examine the central place of the classics in our lives. There will be an additional focus on cross-cultural impact relating to the African-American, Asian-American and Latino experience and a special emphasis on veterans and their families. The program consists of scholar-led reading and film discussion groups, public lectures, workshops and free staged readings of key scenes from Homer's Odyssey and Greek drama by Aquila Theatre followed by scholar moderated "town-hall" style discussions. The program will work closely with libraries and arts centers to maximize publicity and audience sharing and provide access to specially designed web resources, free books for reading groups and collections, specially commissioned scholar essays and marketing materials such as banners, bookmarks, posters and flyers. The program will be launched by three celebrity staged readings and scholar-led town hall meetings at the Washington DC Public Library organized with the Harvard Center For Hellenic Studies, The New York Public Library and the NYU Center for Ancient Studies and The Los Angeles Public Library and The Shakespeare Festival/Los Angeles. These special events will be aimed at an audience of the general public and members of the veteran community. A specially designed program web site will be created utilizing the latest technology, including live web casting, video clips, podcasts, downloadable materials and social networking.

Ancient Greeks/Modern Lives: Poetry-Drama-Dialogue aims to achieve the following goals:
• To provide first-rate humanities public programming to underserved communities in America.
• To inspire people to read, consider, discuss, and experience classical literature and the significant humanities themes these works convey.
• To develop new audiences for humanities programming and heighten the public's awareness of their library's collections, resources, and public programs.
• To increase the library circulation of classical literature.
• To develop new models for cultural programming between the library and arts centers that can be emulated across America.
• To enable libraries to develop performance-based programming that will appeal to their particular diverse audiences and build on the library as a cultural center in the community.
• To encourage arts centers to develop and host humanities based programming in conjunction with their seasons.
• To provide a forum for veterans, their families and the public to respond to classical works and help find contexts to describe and understand their experiences.

The Aquila Theatre Company has been touring productions of classical literature and related educational programs for eighteen years and presenting a regular season in New York for the past nine. Aquila will deploy its extensive production and traveling resources in support of this program. By partnering with libraries, Aquila will gain access to new and underserved audiences for both its educational and theatrical work and increase it presence in the communities it visits. This program will allow the company to spend time developing teaching techniques with scholars and most importantly greatly advances Aquila's mission to bring the greatest works to the greatest number.
The public libraries included have been selected by Aquila in consultation with the Urban Libraries Council. The aim was to introduce this program to a cross-section of public libraries, of differing sizes, geographic location, and diverse audiences.

Peter Meineck has directed and/or produced over 40 productions in NY, London, Holland, Germany, Greece, Scotland, Canada, Bermuda, and the US in venues as diverse as Carnegie Hall, the ancient Stadium at Delphi, Lincoln Center, and the White House. Peter has published several volumes of translations of Greek plays including Aeschylus' Oresteia, which won the Lewis Galantiere Award for Literary Translation from the American Translators Association, Sophocles' Theban Plays (with Paul Woodruff) and Philoctetes and Ajax and Aristophanes' Clouds, Wasps & Birds. He has also written several literary adaptations for the stage including The Man Who Would Be King, Canterbury Tales, The Invisible Man, in addition to Catch-22. He also acts as a mythological advisor, most recently to Will Smith on I Am Legend.

The Aquila Theatre Company's mission is to make classical works accessible to the greatest number. A play becomes ‘classical' because we recognize that after a time it transcends the original culture it was created for. It retains the power to provoke the central question of what it means to be human. As a company dedicated to the classics, we feel a responsibility to acknowledge and explore newfound classical works. Founded in London in 1991 by Peter Meineck, Aquila is now based in New York City at NYU Center for Ancient Studies. Aquila is a major part of New York's theatrical landscape, producing a regular season of plays. Last season, Aquila produced Shakespeare's As You Like It and Ibsen's An Enemy of the People at NYU Skirball Center. Aquila is the also foremost producer of touring classical theatre in the United States, visiting 60-70 American cities per year. Aquila's 2009/2010 Tour consisted of Shakespeare's As You Like It and Ibsen's An Enemy of the People. The 2010/'11 season will see Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream and Pirandello's Six Characters in Search of an Author. Aquila is dedicated to theatre arts education and produces four major initiatives: Workshop America, a nationwide program that provides an opportunity for people to share in the art of Aquila; Theatre Breakthrough, which brings America's schools to the stage; and Shakespeare Leaders, an after-school program that enables inner-city students to perform the classics. Last season, at Frederick Douglas Academy in Harlem, NY Shakespeare Leaders students performed The Comedy of Errors and in 2010 the program is expanding to Hunts Point, Bronx, NY.

For more information on the Aquila Theatre Company, visit www.aquilatheatre.com.