Additional Theater To Be Selected For BOLD Theater Women's Leadership Circle Cohort 2

The Helen Gurley Brown Foundation and Northern Stage announce the second cohort of the BOLD Theater Women's Leadership Circle, a $3 million grant to support women+ leadership and artistry in the American theater. The cohort will be funded beginning June 1, 2021 and will build upon the extraordinary success of the BOLD Circle network.

The BOLD Circle's mission is to create a diverse network of women+ artistic directors (inclusive of trans women and those that are nonbinary, gender non-conforming, and any others who identify as a woman in a way that is significant to them) in professional theaters across the United States and empower them to address the issues preventing women from advancing in theater leadership. The BOLD Circle offers major support of artistic initiatives driven by women+ artists and has created a formal mentorship program which trains and prepares future women+ artistic directors to lead, to create, to innovate, and to deepen the impact of theater on American culture.

The BOLD Circle was launched in 2018 with five visionary women artistic directors and their theaters chosen from 48 applicants by a panel of top theater leadership. Lisa McNulty of WP Theater in New York, Eileen J. Morris of the Ensemble Theatre in Houston, Susan Booth of the Alliance Theatre in Atlanta, Sarah Rasmussen of the Jungle Theater in Minneapolis, and founder Carol Dunne of Northern Stage in White River Junction, Vermont, were each awarded a grant of $750,000 over a three year period, which concludes May 31, 2021. The remarkable success of the program, which has seen five BOLD associates move into major positions of theater arts leadership, over twenty new works by women+ developed and produced regionally and Off-Broadway, and a 50% women+ creative teams benchmark achieved by all theaters, has spurred the renewal of the program and the addition of a sixth grantee. "The network we have built among women theater leaders is unprecedented and it is working, opening the doors for literally hundreds of women artists," says Carol Dunne, who directs the grant program. "We are profoundly grateful to the Helen Gurley Brown Foundation for their generosity in continuing the BOLD Circle and adding a sixth theater. This opportunity will broaden our reach as we change the landscape for women+ theater artists and leaders."

Since the BOLD Circle's founding in 2018, four BOLD associates, whose jobs funded entirely by the BOLD grant, have moved on to major theater leadership: Tamilla Woodard (formerly BOLD Associate Artistic Director at WP Theater) to Co-Artistic Director of New York's Working Theater; Rachel Karpf (formerly the BOLD Associate Producer at WP Theater) to Director of Programming Live at the New York Times; Donya Washington (formerly BOLD Producing Associate at the Alliance Theatre) to Festival Producer at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, and Christina Baldwin, who was promoted to Interim Artistic Director of the Jungle Theater after BOLD Circle member Sarah Rasmussen was appointed Artistic Director at the prestigious McCarter Theatre Center.

Each BOLD Circle member will receive annual funding of $250,000 for a two-year cycle. The grant will be used to support the hiring of an Associate Artistic Director or mentee of similar title, as well as the development of new plays and musicals by women+ creators.

Grant requirements, application, and instructions can be found at boldtheater.org/apply and are due by December 15, 2020.

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