A Los Angeles theater received a major grant to help support its work with local schools and fund a pair of 2015 productions.
The 24th STreet Theatre, which counts Jack Black as a supporter and board advisor, has received a $300,000 grant over three years from the Rosenthal Family Foundation to expand its Enter Stage Right school field trip program. In addition to the production and developing a DVD of the educational show, the money will also go toward a touring production.
“Out of that money, a lot actors are paying their rent. It’s a pretty big program—it’s actors, teaching artists, stage managers,” Jay McAdams, 24th STreet’s executive director, told Backstage.
Next year the company, which operates out of an historic carriage house on the edge of L.A.'s West Adams historical district, will produce a new play by Los Angeles-based playwright Bryan Davidson. The drama, which is a commission, will be a blue grass-version of Hansel and Gretel set in 1920s coal mining Appalachia. The company will also do a play by Finegan Kruckemeyer in 2015. Both productions will cast next year.
Meanwhile, the company has taken its production of “Walking the Tightrope” on a national tour that concludes at the Center Theatre Group’s Kirk Douglas Theatre in May 2015.
McAdams said the company, which has also received money from the National Endowment for the Arts, relies on grants to keep the doors open. “There’s no way we could afford to do 99-seat productions on [ticket sales alone],” he said. “We make money on other projects.”
The company’s school Enter Stage Right show, which features Black in an interactive video, mounted 29 shows last year. This year, it will stage 90. For the five actors in the production it pays “almost Equity money,” said McAdams, “and it’s a really great show.”
Want more L.A. news? Sign up for our Backstage L.A. newsletter!