The Theatre Museum has been awarded a Volunteer Venutres grant from the MetLife Foundation in support of a project proposed by Mike Paleos, a MetLife employee who has volunteered with The Theatre Museum and its predecessor, Broadway Theatre Institute, for fifteen years. The grant will help support public programming to accompany the exhibition "Showboat Round the Bend," which will be presented in collaboration with the Waterfront Museum in Red Hook, Brooklyn, June 2 through October 21, 2007.
The Volunteer Venture Program supports local employee involvement in nonprofit organizations that work to improve quality of life. Grants are made for specific projects in which employees have continuing involvement as volunteers.
"Using video, oral history and live performance on a historic barge, the exhibition presents the history and development of the American showboat, adapted barges that brought theatre – comedy, melodrama, song and dance and vaudeville – to people along rivers throughout the country. The grant will be used to underwrite the cost of printing a brochure and educational materials for distribution," state press notes.
Founded in 2003, The Theatre Museum is New York State's first and only chartered, non-profit museum dedicated to theatre history. The Museum's programs include community outreach, such as teaching children how to write, direct and stage live theatre, and the annual Theatre Museum Awards for Excellence Ceremony.
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