"The Wooster Group will create and present "Poor Theater," a production based on the work of the late Polish director Jerzy Grotowski. "Poor Theater," will explore Grotowski’s ideas about performance and scenography by revisiting the “poor theater” from a contemporary vantage point. First-hand interviews with people who worked with and knew Grotowski will be a cornerstone of this new project. The eyewitness narrative is a well-known element in Wooster Group pieces like "Rumstick Road" and "L.S.D.," as well as "Frank Dell’s The Temptation of St. Antony." These interviews will serve as primary source texts for character development, and the eventual script for "Poor Theater." Other related source material, including videotapes of the Polish Lab Theater’s productions, will also be studied for their context, history and use in the final work. We will also work simultaneously on the plastiques (physical exercises) with the performers and the spatial realization of Grotowski’s world with the design team. Further rehearsals in the spring and fall will allow us to finalize casting, complete the architectural environment, and investigate alternative ways of bringing Grotowski’s ideas into a contemporary milieu. An initial showing at The Performing Garage will give us an opportunity to gauge an audience's reaction to "Poor Theater," before we take the work on national and international tours. These tours will alternate with periods of more rehearsals and additional work-in-progress showings at The Performing Garage. This long refining and rebuilding process will ultimately culminate in a final New York run, which will open the production to the press and the larger New York theater community. This painstaking, multi-year process is what has allowed Wooster Group productions to earn their renown. Details of sound, video, texture and movement are added through a process of accrual and distillation to achieve TWG's unique combination of vibrant performances and layered sensory effects. "Poor Theater" offers an ideal opportunity for the Group to engage our creative process with Grotowski’s world.

We are asking the Jerome Foundation to consider a grant of $10,000 for MultiStages’ world premiere production of a play by Dorothy Tan, “The Palace of Loneliness.” This work was the winner of the MultiStages New Works Playwrighting Contest…and will be presented at HERE Theatre in New York City... Ms. Tan has woven two separate, but surprisingly connected, stories about love, passion, family and death. At first, we meet a young Chinese-American woman who walks into a sanitarium and confesses to a murder that no one can substantiate. Then, we plunge back in time to the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644 A.D.) where we follow a Chinese opera that dramatizes the legend of Emperor Xuanzong and his beloved concubine. The same cast moves from one period to another and from one performance style to another. Several artistic forms are used to tell these stories and reveal how they are linked, including: Chinese opera instrumentation, verse, dance, and highly choreographed movement. “The Palace of Loneliness,” is in direct keeping with the MultiStages’ mission of interdisciplinary productions. MultiStages is a multidisciplinary, cross-cultural, not-for-profit theatre company founded in 1997. Our goal is to create a much needed opportunity for broader artistic collaboration in theatre. By encouraging new works, new partnerships and new ideas, we are providing a forum for emerging and established playwrights, directors, actors, visual artists, dancers, composers, musicians, singers, and others, both within and outside the traditional theatre community. We believe that merging the arts in each theatrical production creates a meaningful dialogue between these often separate disciplines. At the same time, our approach serves a variety of artistic communities.