Kendra Ware has been selected as the 2022 Lloyd Richards New Futures Resident Artist at Actors Theatre of Louisville in Louisville, KY, where she will work with Executive Artistic Director Robert Barry Fleming.
Launched during the pandemic, the residency was created as a visionary strategy for supporting BIPOC artists during the field’s re-emergence. Named for the legendary leader of the American theatre, the goal is to forge new alliances between artists pursuing institutional leadership and forward-thinking Artistic Directors (AD). The program provides extraordinary access while positioning artists of color for advanced opportunities to lead. As Resident Artist, Ware will receive a $40,000 grant along with access to health insurance and additional assistance with housing and travel.
Says Fleming, “I’m ecstatic to have this dynamic, multi-hyphenate artist, Kendra Ware, join us here at Actors Theatre of Louisville. That her residency coincides with the advancement of our Storytelling (R)evolution Lab is enormously exciting as I expect her gifts as an artist of rigorous interrogation and joyous play will be impactful to this process-oriented R&D new work container. Kendra will not only be a great contributor to Actors, but I fully expect she will leave a lasting impression on the North American theatrical ecosystem much like the program’s namesake. It’s with tremendous gratitude to SDCF for this opportunity that we get the privilege to celebrate Lloyd Richards’ legacy by building meaningful creative partnership with Kendra.”
Said Anne Kauffman, Chair of the Lloyd Richards New Futures Residency Selection Committee, “We are thrilled about the residency placement of Kendra Ware at Actors Theatre of Louisville. Through this program, SDCF seeks to build relationships between artists and artistic directors and create an avenue for visionary institutional leadership in our industry. We cannot wait to see what the year will bring and as always, we are honored to lift the legacy of the extraordinary Lloyd Richards through this opportunity.”
The selection committee also included Justin Emeka, Kent Gash, and Chay Yew as well as Amelia Acosta Powell, Impact Producer and Emily Tarquin, Artistic Producer of Actors Theatre of Louisville. Scott Richards served as an advisor.
The 2022 Lloyd Richards New Futures Residency is made possible with support from the Miranda Family Fund, Jujamcyn Theaters, Judi & Douglas Krupp, Concord Theatricals, Allison Thomas, as well as support through the SDCF fellowship funds named for Shepard and Mildred Traube and Sir John Gielgud, and many generous individuals.
Artist Bio:
Kendra Ware is currently working in collaboration with Grammy-Award winning artist Martha Gonzalez on a concept album and theatrical concert, Riding the Currents of the Wilding Wind, a project of the National Performance Network Creation Fund. She is the creator/writer/performer in The American Dream Nightmare: How to Wake Yourself Up, a multimedia performance experience depicting anti-Blackness, that deep dives into the ancestral. Most recently, she staged the experimental video Soñar es Luchar at the Latino Cultural Center for Cara Mía Theater and directed the premiere of Virginia Grise’s theatrical adaptation of Their Dogs Came with Them site-specifically in Perryville Women’s Prison and under the I-19 Freeway in Tucson, Arizona with Borderlands Theater. Additionally, she has recently directed Rascos Asiaticos at DiverseWorks in Houston, TX.
Her work has also been developed and/or produced by Automata LA, REDCAT, Son of Semele, Upright Citizens Brigade, The Santa Barbara Contemporary Museum of Art, East West Players, The Last Bookstore, La Mama Theater, Pregones Theatre, The Flea Theater, Pan Asian Rep, Borderlands Theater, and a todo dar productions. Ware has been a guest artist with La Mama Theater in Umbria, Italy, Long Beach Dance Foundation, Indy Convergence Indianapolis, York University, Northwestern University, Sarah Lawrence College, CalArts, Arizona State University, and the University of Arizona. She has participated in Directors Lab West and her work has been awarded a NEFA Creation and Touring Grant, NPN Documentation and Creation Fund Grant, and was recently recognized with a 2022 Drama League Directing Fellow Assistantship. MFA: California Institute of the Arts.
Residency Mentor Bio:
Robert Barry Fleming is the Executive Artistic Director of Actors Theatre of Louisville. Fleming previously served as Associate Artistic Director at Cleveland Play House and as Director of Artistic Programming at Arena Stage. World premieres commissioned, developed and championed during this tenure at Arena include the 2017 Best Musical Tony Award winner Dear Evan Hansen, Karen Zacarías’s Destiny of Desire, and the 2017 Pulitzer Prize winner, Sweat, by Lynn Nottage. Fleming was also a tenured professor and Chair of the University of San Diego Theatre Arts and Performance Studies Department. His Actors Theatre Direct new media credits include COVID-Classics: One-Act Plays for the Age of Quarantine, Erma Bombeck: At Wit’s End and Romeo & Juliet: Louisville 2020. Live event directing and choreography credits include Are You There? and Once On This Island (Actors Theatre of Louisville), and productions at Cleveland Play House, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, and Tantrum Theater. Professional acting credits include stints on Broadway, Off-Broadway, television (The George Carlin Show) and in films (Academy Award-winning L.A. Confidential).
Host Theatre bio:
Actors Theatre of Louisville unlocks human potential, builds community, and enriches quality of life by engaging people in theatre that reflects the wonder and complexity of our time. Actors Theatre of Louisville is an arts and culture organization as social enterprise utilizing a transmedia multiplatform approach. This strategically centers experiences that reflect a civic commitment to the social good and the health and wellness of the many constituents we serve. In pursuing a synthesis of art and service, our interdisciplinary laboratory intersects art, emergent technology, and social transformation for a storytelling (r)evolution.