Jackie Sibblies Drury Announced as Lark Play Development Center's Jerome New York Fellowship

The Lark Play Development Center announced that Jackie Sibblies Drury will be the inaugural recipient of the Jerome New York Fellowship for 2012-2014. Lark's program is made possible by the New York City's Theatre Subdistrict Council and is the first Jerome Fellowship in New York City supported by the Minnesota-based Jerome Foundation.The Foundation has also supported several well-known fellowships at The Playwrights' Center in Minneapolis.The fellowship is part of an ongoing, long-term plan by the Lark to implement a portfolio of fellowships and programs that provide economic stability for playwrights.

The Jerome Fellowship is designed to provide financial, artistic, and career support to an emerging writer of extraordinary ability, promise and vision. Drury will be awarded yearly stipends of $25,000 in the first year and $15,000 in the second year. For the purpose of additional creative expenses such as travel, research and workshops, Lark has created an Opportunity Fund providing Drury an additional $10,000. Drury will be supported along a self-determined creative path and have access to Lark's extensive toolbox of programs which includes participation in onsite and offsite workshops and residencies. Additionally, Drury will have regular career and project planning meetings with Lark's Artistic Director John Clinton Eisner and other key artistic staff, and she will have access to a theater artist boot camp that provides business and entrepreneurial training.

Drury is a 2012-13 Van Lier Fellow at New Dramatists and has been a member of Soho Rep'sWriter/Director Lab, and was a New York Theater Workshop fellow. On being awarded this fellowship Drury said "It makes me feel like I can breathe. The Jerome will allow me to focus completely on my writing, which is dumfounding, just like a slack-jawed opportunity. The Jerome will also allow me to travel to Morocco to conduct research for a play I have been wanting to write for years, which feels like an amazing opportunity both personally and professionally."

About the Jerome New York Fellow, Lark Artistic Director John Clinton Eisner remarks, "Jackie will now be able to dedicate more time to write, to see actors bring her plays to life and to build a body of work that speaks in her distinctively playful yet powerful voice."

This new fellowship for emerging writers was inspired by the success of the groundbreaking Playwrights of New York (or "PONY") Fellowship, a partnership between Lark and Playwrights of New York, founded by Sandi Goff Farkas, that has helped advance the careers of Carson Kreitzer, Sam Hunter, Katori Hall,Tommy Smith, and A. Rey Pamatmat.The Jerome and PONY Fellowships are part of what will be a portfolio of four life-sustaining fellowships that includes the Launching New Plays Into the Repertoire("LNP") Fellowship which brings national recognition to a rising playwright by securing four or more productions of a play by that writer; and the Mid-Career Fellowship which gives an experienced playwright the chance to set aside teaching and other jobs to explore fresh ideas and renew artistic purpose.

For more information about the Lark Play Development Center, please visit: www.larktheatre.org.

Jackie Sibblies Drury is a Brooklyn-based playwright. Her play We Are Proud to Present a Presentation About the Herero of Namibia, Formerly Known as South West Africa, From the German Sudwestafrika, Between the Years 1884-1915 premiered this spring at Victory Gardens Theater in Chicago, and was developed at The Bay Area Playwrights Festival in 2011. Jackie's work has been featured at PRELUDE.11, Victory Gardens' 2010 Ignition Festival, American Theater Company's 10 x 10 Festival, and The Magic Theatre's Virgin Play Festival. Jackie is a 2012-13 Van Lier Fellow at New Dramatists. She is a member of the 2011-12 Soho Rep Writer/Director lab, a 2010-12 New York Theater Workshop Emerging Artist of Color Fellow, a member of The Civilians' R&D Group, a participant in The Playground at The Lark, and a MacDowell colony fellow. She is on committees to organize classes for Pataphysics Playwriting Workshops and The Public School New York. Jackie is a graduate oF Brown's MFA playwriting program, where she received the David Wickham Prize in Playwriting. Her play Social Creatures was commissioned by Trinity Repertory Theater Company in Providence RI, and will premiere there in 2013.

Founded in 1994, the Lark Play Development Center is a laboratory for new voices and new ideas, providing playwrights and their collaborators with resources to develop their work in a supportive yet rigorous environment and encouraging artists to define their own goals and creative processes in pursuit of a unique vision. We embrace new and diverse perspectives here at home and in all corners of the world, supporting innovative strategies to help new work reach audiences through a network of evolving partnerships. We strive to reinvigorate the theater's ancient and enduring role as a public forum for discussion, debate and community engagement, and to strengthen society's capacity to imagine its future through storytelling. The Lark is led by its co-founder and Artistic Director John Clinton Eisner and Managing Director Michael Robertson.

The Jerome Foundation was established by artist and philanthropist Jerome Hill (1905-1972). Through supporting the creation, development, and production of new works by emerging artists, the Jerome Foundation is dedicated to contributing to the growth and vibrancy of the arts. The Foundation makes grants to not-for-profit arts organizations as well as artists in Minnesota and New York City.For more information about the Jerome Foundation please visit: http://www.jeromefdn.org.