Age And Denovo Initiative Partner For 2023 AGE Legacy Playwright Grants

Advance Gender Equity in the Arts (AGE) has announced that the application portal for the 2023 AGE Legacy Playwright (ALP) Grants will be opening April 15th! AGE is partnering with The deNovo Initiative and excitedly recognize them as official sponsor for the 2023 ALP Grants. The deNovo Initiative is dedicated to supporting storytellers who propel their stories as catalysts for building empathy and changing hearts and minds. AGE's partnership with deNovo will amplify playwrights who have powerful wisdom and narratives to share. The ALP Grants initiative will be led by AGE Program Director, Andréa Morales, who has worked with AGE since 2021.

AGE seeks to change the equity framework of American Theatre by investing directly in playwrights who have been historically denied opportunities because of gender, race, or age. We will be awarding three BIPOC playwrights of marginalized gender* 40+ years of age individual unrestricted grants of $10,000 each. Applicants will be asked to submit Letters of Intent, along with a full-length play or musical. Playwrights will be reviewed on their submission, as well as their motivation and commitment to create lasting change in gender and racial equity in the canon of American Theatre. A panel of professional BIPOC theatre artists, both Portland-based and nationwide, will adjudicate the submissions anonymously.

Celebrated by the local and national theatre community, the inaugural AGE Legacy Playwright Grant recipients were awarded in July 2022 with more than 72 applicants, 7 finalists receiving stipends, and three recipients receiving $10,000 in unrestricted funds. The finalists and recipients were promoted on AGE's social media platforms, given video interviews, and introduced to local Portland theatre companies. In March 2023, AGE partnered with Third Rail Repertory Theatre to produce a reading of 2022 ALP recipient Marlow Wyatt's Listen, A Black Woman is Speaking.

"My hope is that the ALP Grant gathers and celebrates the resilience of BIPOC artists of marginalized gender in a way that impacts not just theatre, but all fields. As a BIPOC artist, I'm cognizant of the workload the current state of our world is putting onto us, and thus honor and welcome a place where I (and you) do not have to explain or educate. AGE hopes that the ALP grants can provide freedom and joy for storytellers, in our theatre communities and beyond," Morales says. AGE Founder, Jane Mantiri, wants to "be curative and healing in our relationship with grant recipients. That means respecting our recipients' dignity and judgment in using the funds towards realizing their goals. We are giving fully and freely, knowing that our recipients will make the world a better place. Together, we are doing something that seldom happens in a world still struggling to find pathways to equity."

The submission window is open from April 15th to May 15th, 2023. Recipients will be announced in September 2023.

*AGE uses the term "marginalized gender" to refer to our community of members who experience marginalization due to their genders. This includes cisgender women, transgender women, transgender men, non-binary people, among many other marginalized gender identities.

To learn more or to apply for the 2023 AGE Legacy Playwright Grants, visit ageinthearts.org/age-grants/2023-2/

To learn more about deNovo, visit denovoinitiative.org