Each month we feature arts and community-based organizations and their programs and projects funded by the Delaware Division of the Arts in our Arts Spotlight which will be included on our monthly e-newsletter, Arts E-News and online. If you haven’t signed up yet for Arts E-News, please do so here.

Funding for Division of the Arts grants is provided by the Delaware General Assembly and the National Endowment for the Arts. To view past grants awarded (1999 to present), please visit our Grants Awarded page.

Grant Types: GOS – General Operating Support; PS – Project Support

 

April 2023

 

City Theater Company
Assassins
Wilmington
General Operating Support

City Theater Company closes its 29th season with a bang April 14-22, 2023 at The Delaware Contemporary with Assassins, the Tony-Award-winning musical featuring music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and a book by John Weidman, based on an original concept by Charles Gilbert Jr. This dark and slyly comic show shadows a group of successful and wannabe Presidential assassins throughout U.S. history, framing their experiences in a broader exploration of American ideals. The score reflects the popular music of each era as the characters tell their stories through scenes and songs. Director Joe Trainor: “For a play that first premiered in 1990, Assassins is shockingly accessible in 2023. It’s an incredibly challenging work – both in its subject matter and in its technical aspects, told through a pastiche of musical styles. And altogether, it does all the things good theater should – entertains us even as it forces us to go uncomfortably deep within our own minds, and our collective histories.” Advisory: Assassins deals with mature content, including R-rated and racially charged language. This production uses non-firing, replica, prop guns. No live ammunition or working weapons are used in this production. This production features gunshot sounds throughout. All such sounds are pre-recorded.

City Theater Company (CTC) is Delaware’s Off-Broadway experience, engaging audiences with intimate and immersive theater experiences of new, contemporary, and classic works. CTC is in partnership with The Delaware Contemporary, bringing the medium of live theater to their artistic offerings. The mission of City Theater Company is to create a body of work for the stage that is consistently high-quality, provocative and new; a body of work that takes risks and breaks barriers in order to engage new theater audiences in an exciting exchange of ideas, images and energies. CTC is especially supportive of original work by regional playwrights as well as a provider of a welcoming, collaborative stage for emerging and established artists of all genres (theater, music, visual arts), backgrounds, and experiences. Fearless Improv is the organization’s traveling comedy improv team, performing throughout the state, and hosting improv education classes for school-age students and adults. Founded in 1993, CTC and Fearless Improv perform in and around Greater Wilmington, embracing both traditional and non-traditional theatrical spaces.

To learn more about City Theater Company, visit www.city-theater.org.

Delaware Symphony Orchestra
Classics V – Amado Conducts Beethoven
Statewide
General Operating Support

At their final Classics Series performance of the 2022-2023 season, the Delaware Symphony Orchestra (DSO) will celebrate David Amado’s 20 years as Music Director and honor the Maestro as he prepares to assume his new role as the first-ever Music Director Laureate in the DSO’s 117-year history. As Music Director Laureate, Amado will continue to appear with the DSO, conducting the season opening and finale in the 2023-2024 season and will lead the DSO in select concerts in the seasons beyond. This celebratory performance — entitled Amado Conducts Beethoven — will be on Friday, April 28, 2023, at 7:30 p.m. in Copeland Hall at The Grand Opera House. Amado will conduct the DSO in Beethoven’s Symphony No. 8 and the triumphant Symphony No. 9, accompanied by guest artists Mary Wilson, soprano; Clara Osowski, mezzo-soprano; Thomas Cooley, tenor; Matthew Burns, bass-baritone; and The University of Delaware Symphonic Choir, under Director Paul Head. The evening will also include the presentation of the Alfred I. duPont Award to Maestro Amado in recognition of his extraordinary and continuing service to the Delaware Symphony Orchestra and the community.

To learn more visit https://www.delawaresymphony.org/.

Lewes Public Library
2023 Shakespeare Festival
Lewes
Project Support

The library’s annual Shakespeare Festival returns in April for a month-long celebration of the Bard and Shakespearean artistry, with a fresh new theme: “Remixing the Bard: Modern Takes on Classic Works.” The festival will offer a unique series of free events including readings, films, lectures, poetry, and even a world premiere performance. All are designed to encourage participants to take a new look at the Bard in exciting and surprising ways, from discussions of innovative staging, expanding on lesser-known characters, integrating the Black experience, speculating on the Shakespeare’s true identity—and more. Check it out! The Festival is free, open to the public, and suitable for all ages. The library has hosted its annual Shakespeare Festival for several years. The Festival allows the Library to offer a variety of free arts programming appealing to a wide audience. The geographic distance of Sussex County, Delaware from major art centers makes local arts programs extremely important. Access to free, quality arts programming is rare. The Festival helps meet the need to provide exposure to the arts for young families, intergenerational activities for parents and children as well as grandparents and grandchildren, and provide recreational opportunities to the growing senior population.

The Lewes Public Library anticipates the needs of the community and adapts, creates and supports classes and programs for all ages that encourage a love of reading, exploration and discovery. The Library provides access for a wide variety of educational, informational and recreational materials to all members of the community through traditional resources and emerging technologies.

To learn more visit https://lewes.lib.de.us/2023/01/12/2023-shakespeare-festival/.

The projects above are supported, in part, by a grant from the Delaware Division of the Arts, a state agency, in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts. The Division promotes these and other Delaware arts events on DelawareScene.com.

The Division offers a variety of grant programs for individual artists; nonprofit, tax-exempt organizations chartered and based in Delaware; and schools and government entities that support arts activities. View a full list of Division grants on the Grants Overview page.