Brave Little Company, Dare to Dream Theatre & More Awarded National Endowment For The Arts Funding

The National Endowment for the Arts has awarded a $20,000 Arts Project Grant to the partnership of Houston theatre Brave Little Company, Wisconsin's Dare to Dream Theatre, Brooklyn's Off The Page, and Northwest Arkansas' Trike Theatre. The funding will support a second season of the partnership's original young adult mystery series Missing from the Museum. With a storyline driven by audience voting, MFTM combines gripping, participatory adventure with art history to highlight issues of representation in arts institutions. The 2021-22 season will include seven online episodes performed live, plus in-person events and online activities held at partner museums around the country. Read more about Missing from the Museum at www.MissingFromTheMuseum.org. "The image of the world's empty museums was a powerful one at the beginning of the pandemic. Like many theatre artists, we want our field to go through a reckoning and rebirth during this time, and confront ways theatre has perpetrated and supported injustice. In developing Missing from the Museum, we wanted to help our audience members develop the skill of looking for who isn't included in the stories arts institutions construct," said Troy Scheid, director of Brave Little Company.

As in-person performances closed, the four theatres joined forces to explore the innovative possibilities of the new online "space." The result was the first season of Missing from the Museum, originally aired in the summer of 2020, in which a mysterious mentor recruits the audience to rescue lost artwork by women artists throughout history and around the world. Using the power of "Clear Sight," an ability that is strongest in young people, the audience encounters the artists Edmonia "Wildfire" Lewis, Hildegard of Bingen, Harriet Powers, Josefa and Juliana Sanromán, Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun, Anna Waser, and Xue Susu. Pursued by a shadowy agency known as the Restoration Department, the audience gathers clues to their anonymous mentor's identity and begins to question who is actually in the right.

Missing from the Museum: Season 2 is titled Chamber of Wonders. As the season begins, the Restoration Department is in turmoil. Recruited again to develop the power of their Clear Sight, audience members aged 9-14 must find ways to counter the historic erasure of female artists - while finding themselves in the middle of a power struggle between factions determined to define what art is and who can make it. With over 20 possible variations, the audience's input determines the path of the scripted episodes.

This year, audience members will also be able to participate in online and in-person events and activities offered by museum partners across the country. The full list of museum partners will be made available soon.

In preparation for Season 2, the partnership is planning a rebroadcast of Season 1 from June 27 - August 15. The rebroadcast is open to the public and uses a pay-what-you-can ticket model. For more information about the Season 1 rebroadcast or to register, visit www.MissingFromTheMuseum.org.

Through Young Audiences of Houston, a version of Season 1 has been made available to elementary and middle schools in the Houston area as an eight-week virtual residency focused on critical thinking, art-making, and art history.

The returning creative team for Missing from the Museum includes Troy Scheid, director of Brave Little Company, and Brittny Bush, a Houston actor and director, and BLC's consulting director; Rachel Thuermer, Founder and Artistic Director of Dare to Dream Theatre; Jody Drezner Alperin, co-founder of Off the Page; Chris Tennison, Head of Academy at Trike Theatre; and teaching artist Amber-Nicole Wolfe.

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