Past
Grantees

Saymoukda (she/her) is an award-winning Lao American poet and playwright born in a Thai refugee camp and raised in Rondo, Saint Paul, Minnesota. She is the author of the children’s book When Everything Was Everything, several plays, and currently serves as the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation’s Playwright in Residence with Theater Mu.

Fellowship Statement

It’s an honor to be awarded a Jerome Hill Fellowship for my work in theater. In my bones, I feel that I’m more than a playwright. I’m a creative legacy-architect. The Lao are not often part of public discourse. I believe that my plays are roadmaps for people to further engage with the histories, experiences, and stories from the Lao diaspora.

During the fellowship, I’ll be taking classes to hone the technical side of playwriting, read scripts, attend virtual performances, and be in conversation with my peers. I’ll also use my time to develop Motherland Orphans, a play about the generation of Southeast Asian Americans who were not born in their “motherland” but are tethered to her through stories, song, food, language, and refugee-love languages.

Thank you, Jerome Foundation. This former refugee’s heart is screaming with joy!

Chamindika Wanduragala is a Sri Lankan American puppet artist/stop motion filmmaker with a visual arts background, and a DJ (DJ Chamun). She loves transporting people to another world where you believe inanimate objects are alive and you feel the sense of joy that comes from having your imagination expanded.

Wanduragala is the founder and Executive/Artistic Director of Monkeybear’s Harmolodic Workshop. She’s inspired by creating a platform for other Native, Black, IPOC artists to explore puppetry, where they get funds, mentorship and studio access to develop creative and technical skills in contemporary puppetry. Wanduragala’s work has been supported by the Henson Foundation, Jerome Foundation, MRAC and MN State Arts Board, and her last puppet theater production was presented by Pillsbury House Theatre. You can see her work (and hear some playlists!) at www.chamindika.com

Fellowship Statement

Puppetry’s surreal nature gives me a sense of freedom to explore without fear. It’s also pure magic/joy when audiences feel that the puppets are truly ALIVE! Bringing the objects to life is really important to me, so I’m grateful for the support of other Native, Black, IPOC puppeteers I’ve gotten to know through Monkeybear.

My first puppet piece was a few years ago, so I’m excited to focus on artistic development in the next few years, moving towards an interdisciplinary practice: embedding stop motion animation into live puppet performance, learning sound design for my work by diving into modular synths (I’m excited by its sense of play, which connects so well with puppetry), creating puppet films and honing my directing skills so I can take the performative aspect to the next level. I’m currently working on my second short film, which incorporates stop motion animation and puppetry (live action).

Delina White is a Native apparel designer, beadwork artist and Indigenous materials jewelry maker. She is a member of the Pillager Band of Minnesota Chippewa and resides on the Leech Lake Reservation in northern Minnesota. She mixes traditionally indigenous materials with her original designed fabrics, including fabrics from around the world found among the woodland peoples through centuries of trade. She uses her art to communicate the values and beliefs of the Anishinaabeg, as an intergenerational cultural knowledge learner from her grandmother. Delina was recognized as one of Six MN Star Tribune’s 2019 Artists of the Year, for her work with the Hearts of Our People, a landmark exhibition as the first major thematic show to explore the artistic achievements of Native women. Her Woodland Scarf placed 2nd in USA Today’s “10 Splurge-worthy Gifts of 2020,” and was named, “2020 Artist in Business Leadership Fellow” by the First Peoples Fund.

Fellowship Statement

Artists provide inspiration to make change, protect, and thrive in a better world. I use fashion as a narrative to assert rights for equity, protect our sacred sites and environment, and to show cultural pride as sovereign nations. We all use fashion to make a declaration of opinion, attitudes and outlook on life. My goal is to continue advocating the importance of arts programming throughout Minnesota and beyond, to tap into the talents and grow business skills of Native artists and work with families engaging the youth in creative placemaking for better, healthier communities. It is my responsibility to preserve the ancestral knowledge and share to advance what artists envisions for themselves and our communities. This fellowship will provide support that will allow me to study apparel as a catalyst to wider approaches of learning, research and creative exploration to truly become an asset of my community and nation.

Whitney White is an Obie Award and Lily Award-winning director, writer, and musician originally from Chicago. She is a believer of alternative forms of performance, multi-disciplinary work, and collaborative processes. Her original musical Definition was part of the 2019 Sundance Theatre Lab, and her five-part musical exploration of Shakespeare’s Women, Reach for It, is currently under commission with the American Repertory Theater in Boston. Past fellowships include the New York Theatre Workshop’s 2050 Fellowship, Ars Nova’s Makers Lab, Colt Coeur Theater and the Drama League. White received an MFA in acting from Brown University/Trinity Rep, and a BA in Political Science and Certificate in Musical Theatre from Northwestern University. Her recent directing includes The Amen Corner (Shakespeare Theatre Company), Our Dear Dead Drug Lord (WP Theatre and Second Stage, NYT Critic’s Pick), Aleshea Harris’ What to Send Up When it Goes Down (The Movement Theatre Company, Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, American Repertory Theatre, The Public Theater, NYT Critic’s Pick).

Fellowship Statement

As a creator, I am a believer of alternative forms of performance, multi-disciplinary work, and collaborative processes. I aspire to use performance across mediums to challenge understandings of blackness, femininity, and much more. I currently have two works in progress to which this funding, in addition to professional development and support, would go to: Macbeth In Stride and Definition. Both challenge musical theatre as a genre, and radically defy traditional structures. One is a look at the process of adaptation, while the other is completely original. Definition is being developed with The Bushwick Starr, and Macbeth In Stride is part of a five-part series with the American Repertory Theatre. Thank you again, and I look forward to the next two years.

Taja Will is a queer, Latinx (Chilean) adoptee, performer, choreographer, and Healing Justice practitioner based in the Twin Cities, the occupied land of the Dakota and Anishinaabe peoples. Will integrates improvisation, somatic modalities, text and vocals in contemporary performance that explores visceral connections to current socio-cultural realities through ritual, archetypes and everyday magic.

Will has been presented in Walker Art Center Choreographer’s Evening, Red Eye Theater, Right Here Showcase and the Candy Box Dance Festival and is the recipient of a 2018 McKnight Choreography Fellowship, administered by the Cowles Center and funded by The McKnight Foundation. Will recently received support from the National Association of Latinx Arts & Culture, the Minnesota State Arts Board, and Metropolitan Regional Arts Council. As a performer Will has collaborated with Sara Shelton Mann, Rosy Simas, Keith Hennessy, Pramila Vasudevan, Deborah Jinza Thayer, Timmy Rehborg, Body Cartography Project and Miguel Gutierrez among others.

Fellowship Statement

My work is conceptual, state-based, grounded in personal practice, and always in relationship to socio-cultural realities of the moment. In that, my areas of attention for the fellowship duration will include personal movement practice, mentorship, and writing/artist advocacy. For me, a weekly, uninterrupted personal movement practice is a foundation for my creativity, physical range, and the creation of new work. Mentorship is my primary affinity. I intend to continue my mentorship with Sara Shelton Mann, as she is willing and able, and start a mentorship with a voice-based artist and a contemporary performance artist who engages with writing. Another area of focus I’m invested in is writing, creative and pragmatic. I’m interested in developing tools for artists to encourage further equity in relationship with presenters and institutional partners, such as a values rider.

Rebekah Crisanta de Ybarra a.k.a. Lady Xøk (Maya-Lenca tribal citizen) is a Twin Cities-based multi/interdisciplinary artist, musician, and culture bearer whose work is rooted in Indigenous Futurisms. Performing as Lady Xøk, she creates multimedia light and shadow installations for immersive experimental storytelling mixing electric and Mesoamerican instruments. She co-founded Electric Machete Studios, a Latinx Art + Music cultural production house. Past works include Dimensions of Indigenous in 2016 at Intermedia Arts; Petroglyphs and Borders as part of the inaugural 2018 artist-in-residence at The M–Minnesota Museum of American Art; Star Girl Clan in 2018 at In the Heart of the Beast PuppetLab Fellow; Decolonial Maya Constellation Maps in 2019 at Minnesota Center for Book Arts as part of the Jerome Mentorship Fellow; and ongoing installation performances developed in part by Redeye Theatre, New Native Theatre, Monkeybear’s Harmolodic Workshop, Catalyst Arts, ArtShanty and current residency with New York-based theatre La MaMa. www.rebekahcrisanta.com

Fellowship Statement

My experimental interdisciplinary social practice (visual art, music, theatre, dance, literature, and puppetry) seeks to shift consciousness around immigration, borders, exodus and interconnectedness of Indigenous Peoples of the Americas and shared and erased ancient histories of collective liberation. Rooted in Indigenous Futurisms, Lenca cosmovision of Managuara, Latinx artesenias of Mesoamerica, and liberation theology of El Salvador, I am interested in the intersection of Low Art, High Art and the Nepantla in-between spaces where God, ancestors, timelessness, and dreams live. I explore the threads of connection between the seen and unseen worlds. I work from a generative space of meditation, ancestor whispers, play, and somatic response. I use transdisciplinary methods to reconstruct into living form Lenca archeology, to document and reimagine my people’s unwritten ancient history for a new future where Central Americans in exodus, First Americans, have a basic human right to migration on Turtle Island, a land traveled for millennia.

Nathan Yungerberg is a Brooklyn-based Afrosurrealist and storyteller whose plays have been developed or featured by The Cherry Lane Theatre, JAG Productions, LAByrinth Theater, Lorraine Hansberry Theater, The National Black Theatre, The Fire This Time Festival, 48 Hours in Harlem, The Lark, Roundabout Theatre Company, The Playwrights’ Center, Crowded Fire Theater, and The Bushwick Starr. He is one of seven Black playwrights commissioned by The New Black Fest for HANDS UP: 7 Playwrights, 7 Testaments published by Concord Theatricals, and adapted by BBC radio. Nathan’s play Esai’s Table was featured in The Cherry Lane Theatre’s 2017 Mentor Project (Mentored by Stephen Adly Guirgis). Awards, honors, and residencies: 2021 National Black Theatre of Harlem I AM SOUL residency, Blue Ink Playwriting Award (Finalist), 2019 Djerassi Resident Artist, The 2016 O’Neill National Playwrights Conference (Semifinalist), Ken Davenport 10-Minute Play Festival (Winner). Nathan is also a writer for Sesame Street.

Fellowship Statement

My work is driven by my journey of creating a black identity. I was adopted at two weeks old and raised by white parents in Wisconsin. My innovation is rooted in investing less in what hasn’t been done before and more into what is not done enough. For generations, the negative portrayals of black bodies have demonized and desecrated a culture filled with light. I seek to share the radiance and the heart of the Black soul in a way that is aspirational and illuminating. I am currently working on a play called Sweetwater: The Gospel of Iman for a residency at the National Black Theatre in Harlem. Sweetwater follows a brotherhood of six Black gay men through the 1980s AIDS crisis in New York City who call themselves the New Apostles, and their god is a god called joy, or resilience, a god of tactics, a god called tomorrow.

Golnar Adili is a mixed media artist with a focus on diasporic identity. She holds a Master's degree in architecture from the University of Michigan and has attended residencies at the RockefellerFoundation for the Arts in Bellagio, Italy, Smack Mellon in Brooklyn, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, the MacDowell Colony, Ucross Foundation for the Arts, Lower East Side Printshop, Women’s Studio Workshop, and Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Workspace among others.

Some of the venues Adili has shown her work include, Nurture Art, Craft and Folk Art Museum LA, Cue Art Foundation, International Print Center NY, and the Lower East Side Printshop. Some of the grants she has received include the Pollock-Krasner Foundation grant, the NYFA Fellowship in Printmaking/Drawing/Artists Books and the Brooklyn Arts Council Brooklyn Arts Fund grant. Adili is currently a Scholarship recipient at Manhattan Graphics Center in New York City.

Hadar Ahuvia creates performances, workshops, and rituals drawing on the multidisciplinary lineages of postmodern dance and Ashkenazi Jewish diaspora. Raised in Israel/Palestine and the US/Turtle Island, Ahuvia’s work has been supported by Movement Research, Baryshnikov Art Center, Yaddo, New Music USA, the Brooklyn Arts Council, and has been presented by NYLA/DTW, the 14th St. Y., Art Stations Foundations, Danspace Project, Gibney Dance. Her work deconstructing Zionist folk dance was recognized with a 2018 Bessie nomination for Outstanding Breakout Choreographer and a mention in Dance Magazine’s “25 to Watch in 2019.” Ahuvia has shared her research at AJS, ASU, City College, Whitman College, and Yale University among others. She has collaborated with Jaffa based choreographer Shira Eviatar, is currently a performer with Reggie Wilson/ Fist and Heel Performance group, and is working with Tatyana Tenenbaum in recasting their sonic and embodied jewishness.