2 Twin Cities companies are part of $1.5M effort to address gaps in plays for youngsters of color

Two of the Twin Cities' leading theater companies are part of a national effort to increase the number of plays written for and about youngsters of color.

The New York-based Mellon Foundation has given a five-year, $1.5 million grant to a quintet of companies that includes the Children's Theatre Company of Minneapolis, a Tony winner that also is the nation's largest theater for youth and families, and St. Paul's Penumbra Theatre, which gave Pulitzer-winning playwright August Wilson his first professional production.

Together, they will commission and develop 16 plays and help to seed the field with work that could be staged by other companies. In doing so, they will address gaps in the theater canon at a time when the nation is undergoing tectonic demographic changes.

"The idea of a group of five theaters working together to create a new kind of partnership and informed by the incredible expertise of these five partners is game-changing," said Children's Theatre artistic director Peter Brosius. "Our conversations preceded the murder of George Floyd, but obviously there's an increased sense of urgency the reckoning caused across the country about what voices are heard, who's at the table and what organizations are supported."

The other companies involved in the effort, dubbed "Generation Now," are New York's Ma-Yi Theater and two Los Angeles-based outfits: Latino Theater Company and Native Voices at the Autry Museum.

"The overwhelming majority of the multigenerational plays in the canon have been white, literally written by white playwrights, and when they feature characters of color, it's from a white perspective," said Ralph Peña, Ma-Yi's producing artistic director. "This changes that and expands the choices available to theaters across the country. It's time to bring new voices into the mix."

The Children's Theatre collaborated with Ma-Yi on Lloyd Suh's superhero romp, "The Wong Kids in the Secret of the Space Chupacabra Go!," which premiered in Minneapolis in 2013 before playing across the country, and with Penumbra Theatre on the classic musical "The Wiz" in 2018.

"We had a yearlong conversation with our boards and staff involved even before we had our co-production," said Sarah Bellamy, Penumbra's artistic director.

"The thing I'm the most excited about is how respectful this process and the relationships are," she said. "This is a model for the new way to make theater where each organization is respected and validated for the authenticity and expertise that they bring."

Bellamy described the collaboration as "groundbreaking" and one that points "a way forward as funders and companies address some of the malignancy in the field."

"The funding is going to the theaters of color, which is different from us being satellites," she said. "So the other thing that's super notable is that it's not only a model for making theater, but also for grantmaking."

The grant comes as tensions boil over and fissures open up around all kinds of differences, including race and ethnicity.

But theater, specifically, and the arts, in general, can offer balms, if not a way out. After all, many people survived the pandemic by engaging with the creative output of artists, including movies, books and music.

"We know that the arts can build muscles of empathy, compassion and understanding," Brosius said, intimating that those are fundamental elements of bringing people together. "The Children's Theatre takes the creation of new work very seriously.

"This [grant] allows all of us to take our work to the next level by having partners who're strong advocates for our [constituencies] with a high degree of insight, cultural competence and connection," he said. "It's unique and exciting."

Rohan Preston • 612-673-4390