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NEA Grant for JAW: A Playwrights Festival 2017

2016 Jaw Workshop 750X500

Portland Center Stage at The Armory has been selected to receive a $35,000 Art Works grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, one of $30 million in grants approved by NEA Chairman Jane Chu for fiscal year 2017.

The NEA’s Art Works category focuses on the creation of art that meets the highest standards of excellence, public engagement with diverse and excellent art, lifelong learning in the arts, and the strengthening of communities through the arts. The $35,000 Art Works grant was awarded in support of the 2017 JAW: A Playwrights Festival, which takes place this coming July.

“The arts are for all of us, and by supporting organizations such as Portland Center Stage at The Armory, the National Endowment for the Arts is providing more opportunities for the public to engage with the arts,” said NEA Chairman Jane Chu. “Whether in a theater, a town square, a museum, or a hospital, the arts are everywhere and make our lives richer.”

Launched in 1999, JAW (short for “Just Add Water”) has always had the playwright and the creative process as its focus. Over the past 17 years, more than 60 new plays developed at JAW have gone on to be produced at 116 theaters throughout North America and the U.K., among them works by Dan O’Brien (whose multi-award-winning The Body of an American was featured at JAW in 2011), Yussef El Guindi, Elizabeth Heffron, Adam Bock, Jordan Harrison and Kimberly Rosenstock.

Each year, through a blind-reading process in which some 200 scripts are considered, the JAW reading committee selects 4-6 playwrights to be in residence at The Armory for two weeks. Over the course of the festival, the writers work with theater professionals from across the country to develop their new plays, which are performed in staged readings during JAW’s Big Weekend. Celebrating creativity across art forms, the Big Weekend also offers an array of other events, including Press Play performances by musicians, dancers, puppeteers and other local artists; readings of works written by Promising Playwrights from the company's Visions & Voices program for teens; Community Artist Labs; and more.


JAW 2017 begins with artists in residence starting July 17. The Big Weekend is scheduled for July 28-30. As always, the JAW Big Weekend is FREE to the public. For more information on JAW, please visit pcs.org/JAW and check back in early summer for this year’s JAW schedule of events.


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