Mobile Unit Tour Of Antigone Receives NEA Artworks Award

Baltimore Center Stage has been awarded a 2019 Art Works grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, the organization announced today. The agency received more than 1,600 Art Works applications for this round of grantmaking, and Baltimore Center Stage has received $40,000 in support of the theater's Mobile Unit production of Antigone and its tour throughout Maryland in February and March.

"Our Mobile Unit provides vital, high-quality theater in a most unique and immersive fashion to often underserved and overlooked communities", said Michael Ross, Baltimore Center Stage Executive Director. "We are so grateful that the National Endowment for the Arts recognizes its value and has awarded funding."

The National Endowment for the Arts has approved more than $27 million in grants as part of the Arts Endowment's first major funding announcement for fiscal year 2019. "The arts enhance our communities and our lives, and we look forward to seeing these projects take place throughout the country, giving Americans opportunities to learn, to create, to heal, and to celebrate," said Mary Anne Carter, acting chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts.

With Antigone, Baltimore Center Stage presents a freshly reimagined production of the timeless Sophocles drama featuring original poetry by the 2016 National Poetry Slam champion (and Baltimorean), Lady Brion. Center Stage's Mobile Unit, the centerpiece of the theater's community programming endeavors, brings theater vitality and engaging, thoughtful scopes of works directly to a vast array of patrons across the state of Maryland.

Beginning February 19, the Mobile Unit will present Antigone at the Sandtown-Winchester Senior Center, YO! Baltimore, the Maryland State Library for the Blind and Physically Handicapped, The House of Ruth, The Jessup Correctional Facility, Earl's Place, The Weinberg Housing and Resource Center, Health Care for the Homeless, and at public libraries and schools in several counties, among other venues. The tour will conclude with

five performances inside Baltimore Center Stage's intimate 99-seat Bernard Black Box on March 14-17.

For more information on Antigone, please contact the Baltimore Center Stage press office or visit our website at www.centerstage.org. For more information on the National Endowment for the Arts grant announcement, visit arts.gov/news.