Indian River State College to Receive $15,000 Grant from the National Endowment for the Arts
Indian River State College to Receive $15,000 Grant from the National Endowment for the Arts
July 11, 2022 Suzanne Seldes
FORT PIERCE, FL—Indian River State College (IRSC) has been approved for a $15,000 Grants for Arts Projects award from the National Endowment for the Arts.
The award will support an updated English translation of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz’s play Amor es más Laberinto and the production of the translation on stage as part of the IRSC Performing and Visual Arts Department’s 2023–2024 production season. The College intends to publish the translation so that other American institutions can study and produce this important work.
The Grants for Arts Projects award is the first that IRSC has received from the National Endowment for the Arts. The project is among 1,125 from across America—totaling more than $26.6 million—selected during this second round of Grants for Arts Projects fiscal year 2022 funding.
“The National Endowment for the Arts is proud to support arts and cultural organizations throughout the nation with these grants, including Indian River State College, providing opportunities for all of us to live artful lives,” said NEA Chair Maria Rosario Jackson, Ph.D. “The arts contribute to our individual well-being, the well-being of our communities, and to our local economies. The arts are also crucial to helping us make sense of our circumstances from different perspectives as we emerge from the pandemic and plan for a shared new normal informed by our examined experience.”
Amor es más Laberinto has never been published in an English translation. This Spanish Golden Age, cloak-and-dagger lyrical romance, written in 1689, is a notable example of classical theatre written by a BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and other People of Color) artist. Sor Juana was a Mexican nun, poet, playwright, and philosopher.
“We are grateful to the National Endowment of the Arts for selecting our project,” said Alex Kanter, Master Instructor of Performing and Visual Arts at IRSC. “With NEA’s support, IRSC can both illuminate the work of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, a pioneering feminist writer and poet and one of the most important Spanish Golden Age masters, and provide a unique learning experience for our students and community members.”
For more information on other projects included in the Arts Endowment grant announcement, visit arts.gov/news.
