Past
Grantees

SEVAN is an award-winning London and NYC-based playwright-actor. Sevan’s work has been seen in London and New York at The Public Theatre, New York Theatre Workshop, The Flea Theatre, The Sheen Center, The Bush Theatre, Theatre Royal Stratford East, Theatre503, Rich Mix, The Old Red Lion, The Space, and Access Theatre. Member of the Bush Theatre inaugural 2015 Emerging Writers Group; The Public Theater 2011 Emerging Writers Group; NYTW Usual Suspect; Rising Circle Theatre Collective 2010 InkTANK Writer's Lab. NYTW 2011/2012 Teaching Artist. 2017 O'Neill National Playwrights Conference Finalist. 2016 Kondazian Playwriting Award for Armenian Stories. 2016 Arch and Bruce Foundation Playwriting Prize. 2014/2015/2016 Princess Grace Award Semi-Finalist. 2014 Papatango Playwriting Prize Shortlist. 2014 Saroyan Social Justice/Human Rights Playwriting Award Finalist. 2010/2012 William Saroyan Playwriting Prize Finalist.

As an actor: New York: Dead are my People (NYTW), Mrs. Christie (world premiere), Lortel Award‐Winning Betrayed (Culture Project, LATW, Kennedy Center, PBS), Dead are my People (NYTW/Noor), Bunty Berman Presents, Betty Shamieh’s The Strangest, NYTW’s Aftermath, NYMF’s Les Enfants des Paris, Prospect’s Mapquest, FringeNYC’s hit Perez Hilton Saves the Universe…. TV/Film: The Dictator, Madame Secretary, Blue Bloods, Damages, M.O.N.Y. London: Scenes from 68* Years, bi, Maroon. Regional includes: world premiere of Language Rooms at the Wilma Theatre, Evita, City of Angels, Into the Woods, Company.

Kavita Shah is a vocalist, composer, polyglot, and lifelong New Yorker hailed by NPR for possessing an “amazing dexterity for musical languages”. Her projects blending modern jazz, folkloric traditions and new music include Visions (2014, co-produced by Lionel Loueke), the interdisciplinary Folk Songs of Naboréa (2017, premiered at Park Avenue Armory), and Interplay, in duet with bassist François Moutin (2018, nominated for France’s Victoire de la Musique for Jazz Album of the Year).

She is currently working on an album of traditional Cape Verdean music, based on her ongoing ethnographic research, and another album of original music with her jazz quintet. Kavita regularly performs her music at major concert halls, festivals, and clubs on six continents, and her work has been supported by Jerome Foundation, Chamber Music America, Camargo Foundation, and David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies. She holds degrees from Harvard College and Manhattan School of Music.

Kevin Sun is a saxophonist and composer living in New York City. He has released three albums under his name, most recently (Un)seaworthy in 2020, and his work has been recognized by publications such as The New York Times, the Village Voice, and DownBeat, among others. Sun is also a member of the co-led ensembles Earprint and Mute, and he has performed and recorded with the bands of Dana Saul, Juanma Trujillo, and Xiongguan Zhang. In addition to performing in New York, Sun has performed regularly in China and is the Artistic Director of the Blue Note China Jazz Orchestra.

Anjna Swaminathan (she/they) is a queer nonbinary multidisciplinary composer, musician, and theatre artist. Her/their work exists at the nexus of multiple creative disciplines, simultaneously leaning into the rigor available within each form while seeking release from a singular form entirely. As an artist with a passion for social critique, community building, and critical consciousness, Anjna’s artistic practice is an extension of an activist spirit. Thus, much of her/their work uses expression and storytelling to forge connections across cultural, economic, gendered, racial, and sexual identities and communities.

Informed by rigorous training in the art music traditions of India, Anjna incorporates and expands this vocabulary in original compositional work as well as the vibrant creative music and improvisatory scene in New York City. Anjna was a 2020 Roulette Van Lier Fellow and is the inaugural Pathways Fellow at the American Composer's Orchestra. Anjna's solo meditation on Borderline Personality Disorder and binary existence, |borders/lines| will premiere at Roulette in Spring 2021.

Kenneth Tam's work often takes the form of video installations that include moving-image works and sculpture, and currently explores ideas around the negotiation and performance of group identity. His work has been exhibited at SculptureCenter, MIT List Visual Arts Center, and the Hammer Museum among other institutions. He will have a solo exhibition at the Queens Museum in the spring of 2021, and will participate in The Shed's upcoming Open Call.  He recently produced his first live(streamed) performance at The Kitchen, and has been an artist-in-residence at the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Pioneer Works, The Core Program at the Museum of Fine Arts, and the 18th Street Arts Center in Santa Monica, CA. He is a graduate of the Cooper Union and is based in Brooklyn.

Kelly Todd is a native of Houston, TX and currently resides in Brooklyn, NY. She received a BFA in Modern Dance from Texas Christian University and a Double Minor in Biology and Environmental Science. She performs with the critically-acclaimed, award winning off-broadway show Sleep No More. Along with performing, she also teaches Mindfulness and Sex Education at Waterfront Montessori School in Jersey City, NJ. Kelly has been awarded the Brooklyn Arts Fund Grant, New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Choreography, LEIMAY Fellowship, and Puffin Foundation Grant. She is currently in development for an environmental dance film series, Under Review, which highlights the American National Monuments that are threatened to be opened for industrial development.

Her films have been featured in multiple film festivals and have been awarded “Most Inspirational Film” from TopShorts and “Best Narrative” from Jacksonville Dance Film Festival.

Choreographer and performer Mariana Valencia, is an LMCC Extended Life grantee (2020), a Whitney Biennial artist (2019), a Bessie Award recipient for Outstanding Breakout Choreographer (2018), a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Award to Artists grant recipient (2018), and a Jerome Travel and Study Grant fellow (2014-15). Her work has been commissioned by Baryshnikov Arts Center, The Chocolate Factory Theater, Danspace Project, The Whitney Museum, The Shed, Performance Space New York and The Public Theater. Valencia has toured nationally and internationally in England, Norway, Macedonia and Serbia; her residencies include AUNTS, Chez Bushwick, New York Live Arts, ISSUE Project Room, Brooklyn Arts Exchange, Gibney Dance Center, Movement Research, and the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art (OR). Valencia has been the co-editor of Movement Research’s Critical Correspondence (2016-17) and she holds a BA from Hampshire College in Amherst, MA (2006) with a concentration in dance and ethnography.

Max Vernon is a 3 time Drama Desk nominee, Out100 Honoree, and recipient of the Lucille Lortel Award for Best Musical, Richard Rodgers Award, Pew Arts and Culture Grant, Jonathan Larson Grant, New York Stage and Film's Founders Award, New York Foundation of the Arts Fellowship, and the JFund Award from the Jerome Foundation. They have been a Dramatist Guild Theatre Fellow, MacDowell Fellow, and an artist in residence at Berkeley Rep, Ars Nova, Kimmel Center (viaThe Public Theater), Disney Creative Entertainment, and Rhinebeck Writer’s Retreat, among others. Their musical, The View UpStairs, ran 105 performances Off-Broadway and has subsequently had 20+ productions around the country & world. Their other musical, KPOP, was the most nominated Off-Broadway show of the 2017-2018 season and is preparing to transfer to Broadway once social distancing ain't a thing.

Max is also an acclaimed cabaret artist. Notable concert performances include a sold out 6 month residency at Joe’s Pub of the Public Theater (Existential Life Crisis Lullaby), Kennedy Center, Lincoln Center, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.maxvernon.com

Instagram: @frauleinsallybowels

Twitter: @maxvernon

Alicia Waller is a multi-talented vocal composer whose vision is to inspire cultural diplomacy through music. With a background in opera as a soprano vocalist, Alicia has since focused on soul music, jazz, and the African diaspora as the foundation for her EP Some Hidden Treasure, released in February 2020. Her voice and sound have been hailed as “flexible and virtuosic”.

Alicia’s work and process were recently featured in the documentary short What Moves You by SkyHour. She seeks to create inspiring and progressive music that highlights the depth and beauty of the human experience.

Chris Watts is a visual artist currently working in New York, NY. Through the transfiguration of painting, drawing, video, and installations his work revises, interrogates, and re-examines social and personal narratives. This re-examination is not to simply supplement a new narrative, but to create a project of disruption. These works have been exhibited at the Monica King Contemporary, New York; Urban Institute for Contemporary Arts, Grand Rapids, MI; David Klein Gallery, Detroit, MI; Knockdown Center, Queens, NY; Winston Salem State University, NC; Greensboro College, NC; and the Cité Internationale Universitaire de Paris, France.

Watts completed residency programs at the Marek Maria Pienkowski Foundation, Chelm, Poland (2019); the McColl Center for Art + Innovation, Charlotte NC (2019 and 2010); Henry Street Settlements Abrons Arts Center, New York, (2018); and the Lower Manhattan Culture Council Workspace Program, New York, NY (2016-2017). He participated as a Fellow in the Art & Law Program at Cornell University, NY (2018). He received training from the College of Arts + Architecture at the University of North Carolina-Charlotte and from the Yale University School of Art.

Kit Yan and Melissa Li are a Queer Asian-American musical theater writing team based in New York City. They are 2019 Dramatists Guild Foundation Fellows, MacDowell Colony Fellows, Lincoln Center Writers-in-Residence, and 2019-2020 Musical Theater Factory MAKERS. Their works include Interstate, which had its world premiere in March 2020 at Mixed Blood Theater and won “Best Lyrics” at the 2018 New York Musical Festival, and MISS STEP, which was commissioned by The 5th Avenue Theater’s first draft program and won a 2019 Vivace Award from the Bret Adams and Paul Reisch Foundation. Most recently, they completed a one-act musical called Cancelled, a commission by Keen Company.

Their work has been supported by The 5th Avenue Theatre, Playwrights Horizons, Weston Playhouse, NewYorkRep, Goodspeed Musicals Johnny Mercer Colony, The Village Theater, Musical Theater Factory, Dixon Place, and many others.