En Garde Arts Launches Joan D. Firestone Fund for Mid-Career Theatre Artists

Longtime En Garde Arts Chairperson and board member Joan D. Firestone is being honored with the creation of a fund in her name. En Garde Arts has raised $100,000 through a group of generous donors. This is a five year endeavor and every year one theatre artist will receive an $18,000 award and will have full freedom with how to use the funds.

A nominating committee has been formed with: author, educator and philanthropist Kim Bendheim, former New York Theatre Workshop Associate Artistic Director Linda Chapman, En Garde Arts board member Joan D. Firestone, Tony Award-winning playwright David Henry Hwang, two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Lynn Nottage and En Garde Arts Artistic Director Anne Hamburger. The committee is selecting a mid-career theatre artist engaged in social change through their work.

En Garde Arts will hold the first public developmental reading of the work/work-in-progress within the first year to 18 months from the original commission date. En Garde Arts will hold no rights to future productions of the commissioned work.

This prestigious award is by invitation only and the recipient will be given the award at the En Garde Arts Gala on Thursday, December 8th at Ideal Glass Studios, (9 W 8th Street, New York, NY 11001).

The theme for this year's gala is Artists honoring Artists. En Garde Arts is honoring award-winning playwright, author, essayist and professor Sarah Ruhl along with the Founder and former Artistic Director of the Lark John Clinton Eisner. Lynn Nottage and David Henry Hwang will be announcing the recipient of the Joan D. Firestone Commissioning Fund at this auspicious event.

"Joan has been a nurturing voice and unbelievable champion of artists for decades. I've long admired her generosity and genuine commitment to supporting theater artists who are making work that is socially engaged, complex, and endeavors to have a meaningful dialogue with audiences." - Lynn Nottage

"Joan Firestone has devoted her life to supporting artists and making the arts in America more innovative, inclusive, and excellent. She has inspired me throughout my career and this groundbreaking new Fund is a fitting tribute to her transformative impact." - David Henry Hwang

Artistic Director Anne Hamburger says; "I truly believe that if it weren't for the incredible philanthropic abilities of Joan D. Firestone, En Garde Arts wouldn't exist today. In addition to her fierce determination to support the arts in any way she can, she is above all an extraordinary human being and I am honored to launch this fund in her name."

En Garde Arts, a not-for-profit theatre company based in NYC, creates, produces and presents bold theatre experiences that reach across artistic, physical and social boundaries.

Recent productions include: Fandango for Butterflies (and Coyotes), a New York Times Critic's Pick that opened at La Mama in 2020 and has since toured to Penn State, University of Maryland and the La Jolla Playhouse; Downtown Stories: Dreams from New York's Oldest Streets and Downtown Live produced with the Alliance for Downtown New York; and the critically-acclaimed A Dozen Dreams presented by Arts Brookfield. En Garde Arts' ongoing artist development series Uncommon Voices continues to serve artists whose work is at the intersection of arts and social justice and its newest series, playdate, features innovative works-in-progress by early career artists in the Artistic Director's backyard in Brooklyn. Engardearts.org

For tickets and information to the En Garde Arts gala, please contact Marketing and Development Manager, Clara Alonso, Clara@engardearts.org.

For contributions to the Gala, click here. To give a restricted gift to the Joan D. Firestone Commissioning Fund, click here.

Major contributors to the Fund are: Cynthia Argo, Kim and Stewart Beck, Mimi & Dennis Conway, Arthur DeGroat, Deborah Dugan, Dorothy Dunn, Agnes Gund, Ronald & Amy Guttman, Anne Hamburger, Penny Brandt Jackson & Thomas Campbell Jackson, Leon Lowenstein Foundation, Anne Maffei, David M. Milch Foundation, Carol & Seamus O'Cleireacain, Gerry Ohstrom, Joanne Ramos, David Richenthal, Daryl Roth, Meg Walker & Morey Bean.

BIO OF JOAN D. FIRESTONE

JOAN D. FIRESTONE is a familiar figure in New York's cultural community and a fierce advocate for arts education. She has held executive and policy level positions in the for-profit, not-for profit, and government sectors, including: Assistant Director, New York State Council on the Arts under Kitty Carlisle Hart; Director of Economic Development and Cultural Adviser to the NYC Comptroller Alan Hevesi; Executive Director, Flushing Meadows Park Corporation; Special Adviser for the Arts to the Chancellor of the NYC Board of Education; President, Primary Design Galleries; and most recently, Executive Director of the award-winning storytelling organization The Moth. Joan is an independent theatre and events producer with credits for Off-Broadway productions. She has served as Chair of the Cherry Lane Theatre, championing its unique mentor project for emerging and mid-level playwrights; Vice President of Government Affairs for the New York Women's Agenda; and Co-President of the League of Professional Theatre Women. She currently sits on the boards of The Moth and the Dramatists Guild Fund.

BIOS OF THE NOMINATING COMMITTEE

Kim Bendheim is a writer, teaching artist and poet. Her work has appeared in a wide variety of publications, including The New York Times, The Chicago Tribune, the Forward and Fortune. She is Vice President of the Leon Lowenstein Foundation.

Linda Chapman is a long-time member of the League of Professional Theatre Women and Co-chair with Joan D. Firestone of the Gilder/Coigney International Theatre Award Program. She is founding Board President of Youth Arts NY. Chapman was Associate Artistic Director at New York Theatre Workshop from 1995-2020; a 2015 LILLY Award Recipient; co-adapted Ann Bannon's Lesbian classic, The Beebo Brinker Chronicles (GLAAD Media Award winner, nominated for a LAMBDA Literary Award) for the stage with playwright Kate Moira Ryan and co-writer/performer of OBIE Award winning Gertrude and Alice: A Likeness to Loving with life partner, Lola Pashalinski.

Anne Hamburger founded En Garde Arts in 1985. As its Artistic Director and Creative Producer, she pioneered site-specific theatre in New York in the 80s and 90s, using its streets and historic landmarks as her stage. In 1999 she was hired to launch and run Creative Entertainment, a global division for Disney. After nine years she returned to NYC and re-launched En Garde Arts developing theatre with social change at its core, assembling visionary risk-takers to produce work from its initial inception through closing night and encouraging artists to explore storytelling through music, movement, multimedia and site-specificity.

For her work, she has won 6 Obies, 2 Drama Desk Awards, an Outer Critics Circle Award, Lee Reynolds Award and the Exceptional Merit in Media Award from The National Political Womens' Caucus. She graduated with a Master of Fine Arts degree from the Yale School of Drama. She is a well-known speaker who most recently was a keynote speaker at the Sorbonne in Paris, France for a conference called The City as our Stage.

David Henry Hwang'S shows include the plays M. Butterfly, Chinglish, Yellow Face, Golden Child, and FOB, as well as the musicals Soft Power, Aida, Flower Drum Song and Disney's Tarzan. Hwang has written thirteen operas and co-wrote the song "Solo" with late pop icon Prince. His film/TV work includes the TV series The Affair. Hwang is a Tony Award winner and three-time nominee, a Grammy Award winner and two-time nominee, and a three-time Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama.

Lynn Nottage is a playwright and a screenwriter, and the first woman in history to win two Pulitzer Prizes for Drama. Her plays have been produced widely in the United States and throughout the world. Recent work includes the book for MJ the Musical (Broadway), the libretto for the Intimate Apparel Opera (LCT), and Clyde's (Broadway, 2ST, Goodman Theater), and co-curating the performance installation The Watering Hole (Signature Theater). Past work includes Sweat, Ruined, the book for The Secret Life of Bees; Mlima's Tale; By the Way, Meet Vera Stark; Intimate Apparel; Fabulation, or the Re-Education of Undine; Crumbs from the Table of Joy; Las Meninas; Mud, River, Stone; Por'knockers; and POOF!. She has also developed This is Reading, a performance installation in Reading, Pennsylvania. Ms. Nottage is the recipient of a MacArthur "Genius Grant" Fellowship (among other awards), is an Associate Professor at Columbia University School of the Arts, and is a member of the Dramatists Guild.