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CONVERGENCE-CONTINUUM GOT A SURPRISE NATIONAL AWARD FROM THE ROBERT RAUSCHENBERG FOUNDATION!
The Robert Rauschenberg Foundation (New York) selected 16 arts organizations from around the country this year to award grants to, and convergence-continuum is one of them! This three-year, $10,000-a-year grant is not anything that we (or any of the other recipients) applied for. It’s done by anonymous nomination from local arts leaders, and came as a complete surprise. The Foundation selects arts organizations from culturally rich, but under-funded regions. This year the regions were Cleveland, Boise, Buffalo, Kansas City and Phoenix. And by the way, not only are the grants a surprise, but also kind of a mystery. They don’t reveal who the nominators are. (But clearly, someone really likes us!) For more on the Foundation and the awards check out their website at http://rauschenbergfoundation.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=143&Itemid=104

Thanks to all of you who have made this huge honor possible! The grants are intended not only to keep struggling arts organizations going, but to help them expand their programs and activities, and to take new risks. I’ve got a number of ideas about what to do with the “bonus cash” this will leave us, and I’d like to hear yours, too! Please send me your wish lists! You can send them to me at clydesimon@sbcglobal.net. I’d love to hear from you.

Peter Roth and I got over to Ensemble last night to let The Iceman Cometh “wash” over us, as Eric Coble put it in a post. It did indeed. Four hours of washing makes for a very good scrubbing. The language does indeed wash over you and sweeps you up and spins you off and out to sea. I was reminded of Dylan Thomas’s Under Milk Wood with the powerful language and intense development of many, many characters. The play is truly a mammoth undertaking to see, let alone, I’m sure, to act in, or direct and stage. I can only ponder that effort. I remember going to Stratford one year and watching Night of the Iguana and thinking about how relentless and draining acting in that piece must be. Watching Iceman was confirmation again about the physical requirements of acting in a play that is long and filled with emotional power. Fortunately for Ensemble, the assembled a great cast with many of my favorite actors in Cleveland, including Michael Regnier (who was in my thesis play), Robert Hawkes, Bobby Williams, and Allen Branstein.

I won’t discuss O’Neill’s play that much, as there are other places online that discuss it and do a far better job than can I. All I can say is that I’m glad I got to see it. The folks at Ensemble did a great job.