JAG receives $100,000 grant, creates JAG Ambassador Program
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JAG Receives $100,000 Grant, Creates JAG Ambassador Program, Commissions Unprecedented Black Joy Project, and More.
Pictured: Jarvis Green, Founder & Producing Artistic Director of JAG Productions
JAG has been busy. And all of our hard work and your unwavering support is paying off to make a more just, equitable, and creative world. Here are a few things that are happening in our work and community:
The Bay & Paul Foundations
After we had to indefinitely suspend our Off-Broadway run of Nathan Yungerberg’s Esai’s Table at Cherry Lane Theatres in New York due to the Covid-19 pandemic, JAG received a $100,000 unrestricted grant for operations from the Bay & Paul Foundation out of New York, NY on July 28th. Their mission is to, “foster and accelerate initiatives that prepare agents of change working to strengthen our social compact and develop authentic solutions to the challenges of this pivotal century.”
In this pivotal time, The Bay & Paul Foundations gave this gift based upon JAG Productions’ proven record of developing deep connections through its art in the Upper Valley and for the promising projects it has on the horizon. Like many in the area, The Bay & Paul Foundations see JAG Productions as innovative agents of change. We appreciate the support in our community because it shows and the love JAG is spreading is being recognized not just in the Upper Valley but throughout the theater-world.
Pictured: Vincent Mack, Harold Steward and Jarvis Green
Location: Wolf Tree, White River Junction
JAG recently launched its new JAG Ambassadors program, in which local businesses adopt anti-racist practices and collectively promote marginalized voices in their operations, products, and services, such as being safe spaces for the BIPOC and LGBTQ+ people. This program has already proven fruitful in collaboration with the cocktail bar Wolf Tree in White River Junction, VT to concoct a cocktail and with Abracadabra Coffee Company in Woodstock, VT to develop a coffee roast, both called “Justice Allows Growth,” where the proceeds benefit JAG. Please support these businesses knowing that they are putting in the work to be allies to JAG and to the BIPOC and LGBTQ+ communities.
Inaugural members of the JAG Ambassador program are:
JAG is currently working on something big. Beginning September 8th, JAG Productions, Writer/Director Stevie Walker-Webb (Director of Esai’s Table), 11 actors, two documentarians, a producer, and a chef set out on a month-long retreat to explore the question, ‘Can a play be created outside the power structures and without reference to whiteness, in a pure expression of Black Joy?’ Jarvis followed up with the questions, “Is racism what’s distracting Black creatives from being our fullest creative selves? What does it mean to create a theatrical piece where we’re not distracted by racism? Where racism isn’t in the room? Where we are solely focused on our joy and other aspects of our Blackness?” The group of 17 Black creatives will spend four undisturbed weeks at Knoll Farm (Thank you for your beautiful space!) in Waitsfiled, VT to attempt to answer these questions, resulting in a new play, a methodology, and a documentary.
The 11 artists will tell interweaving stories that produce and revel in a spiritual cleansing of authentic, joyful Blackness. Walker-Webb says of the play, “It’s a baptism. You are watching these characters try to figure out how to be joyful in their own skin, and if you watch it, you’re going on that journey too and you’re also being invited to see how truly complete that colonization has been and how rigorous Black creatives have to be about carving out new ways of being and creating. If we don’t, we fall into colonization.” A methodology to shed the burden of whiteness in theater art development will be created and a documentary called Homecoming: A Return to Black Joy will record the journey.
Your support is blazing new trails in theater and for that, we are eternally grateful. Be on the lookout for the results of the Black Joy Project.
Virtual Open Mic
JAG Productions and Pride Center of Vermont will close out Vermont’s Pride week with OUT HERE, a live-stream showcase of regional BIPOC LGBTQ+ artists TONIGHT, Sunday, September 13 at 7 p.m. Suggested donation is $10 and all proceeds raised will go to G.L.I.T.S. whose mission is to “advocate and educate to ensure health, wellness, and inclusion of transgender people in our society and to address the stigmatization and criminalization of trans people because of anti-prostitution/anti-sex work laws.”
Hailing from Anderson, SC -- like our very own Producing Artistic Director Jarvis Green -- JAG would like to recognize and make tribute to Chadwick Boseman, a beacon of Black joy & beauty, a world-class artist, and a testament to the power of love, persistence, and artistic excellence. JAG remembers Boseman for his roles on and off the screen. Rest in Power.
The title says it all, If you have questions and want to become more knowledgeable about the transgender community, read the article by the National Center for Transgender Equality.
