LARK: Jerome New York Fellowship for playwrights

Lark launches “Jerome New York Fellowship” for early-career playwrights from New York City and Minnesota State;
award includes creative support for two years plus $40,000 stipend and $10,000 in additional opportunity funds for travel and research

The Lark Play Development Center announced that it will launch the Jerome New York Fellowship in September 2012 as part of its long-term plan to implement a portfolio of funded programs that create economic independence for playwrights.

Seeded by the Jerome Foundation in Minneapolis, MN and the New York City Subdistrict Council, the pilot round of the Jerome New York Fellowship will support an early career playwright from New York City or Minnesota in developing a body of work over a two-year period. The awardee will design a program with Lark staff and will receive a stipend of $25,000 in the first year and $15,000 in the second year in order to spend more time writing and less time at an unrelated “survival job.” In addition, the program provides an “Opportunity Fund” of $10,000 that may be spent at the Fellow’s discretion for the purposes of travel, research, workshops, or other creative needs that occur over the next five years.


“The substantial stipend and two-year commitment are the keys to why this particular Fellowship is so unique and valuable,” explained Lark’s Artistic Onsite Program Director Lloyd Suh. “We expect the Jerome New York Fellowship to change someone’s life; it provides an emerging writer of extraordinary promise and vision a chance to translate that vision into creating a significant body of work”.

This new fellowship for emerging writers was inspired by the success of the groundbreaking Playwrights of New York (or “PONY”) Fellowship, a partnership between Lark and Playwrights of New York, founded by Sandi Goff Farkas, that has helped advance the careers of Carson Kreitzer, Samuel D. Hunter, Katori Hall, Tommy Smith, and A. Rey Pamatmat. While modeled on the PONY Fellowship, the Jerome New York Fellowship is designed for a writer at an earlier stage in her/his career. Applications for the Jerome New York Fellowship are currently being accepted, and the fellowship will be awarded in early summer.

The Jerome New York Fellowship is open to applicants who are New York City or Minnesota state residents as well as citizens or permanent residents of, and eligible to work in, the U.S. Fellows must commit to maintaining residency in New York throughout the fellowship period. Applicants must make a case for how they qualify as “emerging” playwrights, and how they would use the resources of the fellowship. Applicants may not have had more than two different works professionally produced at the time of application, i.e., works produced on professional Actors Equity contracts or the equivalent (Equity showcase/waiver productions are not included).

The deadline for applications is Wednesday, March 28. For more information, please visit http://www.larktheatre.org/programs/fellowshipsjeromeny.html.

Founded in 1994 as a laboratory for new voices and new ideas, the Lark Play Development Center provides playwrights with indispensable resources to develop their work, nurturing artists at all stages in their careers, and inviting them to express themselves freely in a supportive and rigorous environment. The Lark reaches into untapped local populations and across international boundaries to seek out and embrace unheard voices and diverse perspectives, celebrating differences in language and worldviews. By encouraging artists to define their own goals and creative processes in pursuit of a unique vision, we believe we are reinvigorating the theater’s ancient and enduring role as a public forum for discussion, debate and community engagement. For more information: www.larktheatre.org.