Free Street Theater, Old Town School are Joyce Award recipients

Chicago’s Free Street Theater and Old Town School of Folk Music are each the recipients of a $50,000 award from the Joyce Foundation’s 2017 Joyce Awards competition, it was announced Thursday.

In all, five collaborations between artists of color and regional cultural organizations received the prestigious awards.

According to the official announcement, Chicago’s Free Street Theater “will commission a new play, ‘Meet Juan(ito) Doe,’ from playwright Ricardo Gamboa.”

“At Free Street, we are fundamentally committed to self-representation, to making theater by, for, with, about and in Chicago’s diverse communities. We are thrilled to have the support of The Joyce Foundation in making ‘Meet Juan(ito) Doe,’ a project conceived by Ricardo Gamboa that uses a grassroots and ensemble process to center the stories and contributions of Chicago’s Mexican-American community,” said Coya Paz, artistic director of the Free Street Theater, in a prepared statement. “At a time when families are being torn apart by deportations, when American citizens are being told they don’t belong in the country that raised them, when being Brown or speaking Spanish is an everyday act of bravery, there is no more urgent time to invest in performance that tells the true stories of our city.”

The Old Town School of Folk Music will commission “Quantum Music/Englewood” from renown saxophonist and composer, Ernest Dawkins, and percussionist/sitar player, Rahul Sharma.”

“We’re thrilled to have this opportunity to work with such exemplary artists in a celebration of the musical heritage of a section of our city that is more often cited for challenges rather than artistic achievements,” said Bau Graves, executive director of Old Town School of Folk Music, in a prepared statement. “The Joyce Award will set free voices that have long gone unheard.”

The other three award recipients include: Cleveland’s Cuyahoga Community College Foundation, which will commission new jazz work by Grammy Award-winning trumpeter/composer Terence Blanchard. The Minnesota Center for Book Arts will commission a new exhibit from renowned artist Amos Paul Kennedy Jr. to coincide with the center’s biennial celebration next summer. The O’Shaughnessy theater at St. Catherine University in St. Paul, Minn., will commission the Minneapolis-based Ananya Dance Company to develop/stage “Shaatranga,” a new production addressing women’s roles, work and global commerce.

Since the competition’s inception in 2003, the Chicago-based Joyce Foundation has awarded nearly $3 million to commission 55 new works, in the only region-wide program “to supporting artists of color in major Great Lakes cities.”