Joyce Award Winners

Zakiyyah Alexander, Imani Uzuri and Penumbra Theatre

Related

Share

Penumbra Theatre

Zakiyyah Alexander and Imani Uzuri received a Joyce Award with the Penumbra Theatre in St. Paul, Minn., to stage, GIRL Shakes Loose Her Skin, in the spring of 2017. The play represents new territory for the theater with themes of LGBT rights and social change under the new direction of Sarah Bellamy, who takes over artistic director duties from her father, Lou Bellamy.

Zakiyyah Alexander is a prolific playwright whose work has been produced by a range of mid-sized theaters – including Greenwich Street Theater, ACT – A Contemporary Theater, Classical Theater of Harlem, Hartford Stage and more. She has won many awards including the Lorraine Hansberry Prize, is a graduate of the Yale School of Drama, and most recently was a writer for Grey’s Anatomy.

Imani Uzuri is a composer and lyricist and has been called “a post-modernist Bessie Smith” by the Village Voice and “one of the top emerging female composers” by the New Yorker. She is also 2015 Park Avenue Armory Artist-in-Residence.

Related Content

Grantee Spotlight

They Got NEXT — Chicago Sinfonietta Celebrates 35 Years

During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Chicago Sinfonietta, like so many organizations, was forced to reimagine itself, pivoting programming and performances to a fully virtual space.

Grantee
Chicago Sinfonietta

News

Joyce Awards Information Session

Culture director Mia Khimm and grants manager Lynne Wiora discuss the Joyce Awards program and the application process. LOIs are due on September 12, 2022. New applicants should create accounts by September 7, 2022.

News

2022 Joyce Awards Announcement

Five innovative new projects by pioneering artists of color spanning the visual, performing, and multidisciplinary arts that engage diverse communities in Chicago, Detroit, Indianapolis, and Minneapolis-St. Paul will receive this year’s annual awards.

News

The “Full-Circle” Moment of Nick Cave and Forothermore

Recent work by Internationally acclaimed, Chicago-based artist and Joyce Awards winner Nick Cave.

Grantee Spotlight

Congo Square Play Promotes Healing, Catharsis in Chicago

Congo Square Theatre is an ensemble dedicated to producing transformative work rooted in the African Diaspora. For 20 years it has committed to telling stories by and for Black people.

Grantee
Congo Square Theatre Company

News

Groundbreaking Lyric Opera Show Led by Two Joyce Award Winners

Profile on Joyce Award Winners Terence Blanchard & Camille A. Brown involvement in new Lyric Opera show

Grantee Spotlight

Building collective power through research

Black Researchers Collective was founded in 2019 with a mission to train and equip communities with the research tools necessary to be more civically engaged and policy informed.

Grantee
Black Researchers Collective

Grantee Spotlight

The nation’s first Black arts museum

South Side Community Art Center is the nation’s first Black arts museum that develops and showcases some of the nation’s most influential Black artists.

Grantee
South Side Community Art Center