Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, SPACE was unable to offer residencies to our usual number of artists, activists and institutions this year. However, to honor the work of the over 200 applicants who were named as 2020 finalists from a pool of over 1,300 applications, SPACE has made the decision to offer a number of those finalists a deferred residency in 2021. Those who received a 2021 Residency will be named next year.
We want to draw your attention to SPACE's 2020 Finalists, who represent some of the most exciting artists and activists today. Please click on a person's name to learn more or contact them.
The Working Farm
Brittany Allen, David Cote, Sarah Einspanier, Julia Izumi, Laura Jacqmin, Hannah Kenah, Stefani Kuo, Arika Larson, Kareem Lucas, Jessica Mcllquham, Ife Olujobi, Gab Reisman, Michelle J. Rodriguez, Andrew Rosendorf, Noah Rubenstein, Amy Staats, Caitlin Saylor Stephens, juliany taveras, Deborah Yarchun, Zack Zadek
Family Residency
Aamina Ahmad, Cathy Akers, Fanny Allié, Julia Barbosa Landois, Courtney Baron, Megan Blakemore, Ashley Blalock, Nikki Brake-Sillá, Jennifer Chang, Deepsikha Chatterjee, Shana Cooper, Amy Cutler, JD Davids, Angela Davis Johnson, Kristoffer Diaz, Mathilde Dratwa, Rebecca Drolen, Anita Felicelli, Samina Hadi-Tabassum, Nikkya Hargrove, Mary Henderson, Anna K. Jacobs, Chloe Johnston, LaToya Jordan, Lisa Kereszi, Kait Kerrigan, Swati Khurana, Libby King, Portia Krieger, Nimisha Ladva, Aaron Landsman, Morten Meldgaard, Saleem Penny, Jason Rondinelli, Sawyer Rose, Mia Rosenthal, Sharyn Rothstein, Lara Salahi, Terri Samundra, Lance Twitchell, Brittney Washington
GREEnhouse residency
Diallo Adams, DaMonique Ballou, Amara Brady, Katie Do, Allisha Edwards, Tracee Herbert, Onyekachi Iwu, Abraham Johnson, Sasha King, Non Kuramoto, Christopher Lysik, Michael Mobley, Singer Morra, Charlie Oh, Juana Parral, Vivian Prado-Núñez, Kevin Renn, Dyer Rhoads, Henry Sheeran, Regina Velaquez, Britt Willis
creative residency
Chelsea Altman
THEY IS: A woman at a crossroads finds herself caught between her self-assured transgender teenager and her larger-than-life aging mother—and discovers surprising truths about herself.
Bruna Amaro dos Santos
PAPANGU Studies: Making full-body festive masks for women. For the right to festive anonymity for all.
Kevin Armento, Sammy Miller
The Last Medicine Show: Sammy Miller and the Congregation are reviving the medicine show tradition to create a musical to heal America.
Aya Aziz, Arpita Mukherjee
Finding Paradise: A Musical Trilogy: Finding Paradise is a semi-autobiographical musical trilogy that follows an Egyptian-American family across continents and generations as they search for home and belonging.
Connor Barrett, Brian Gattas
Each Other's Mothers: A two gay man show about our Moms, how they've informed our relationship, and about what happens when one of the mothers dies.
Marta Bausells
Forget the Sun: Creative non-fiction manuscript about memory, intergenerational trauma, art and healing.
Benjamin Benne, Cat Rodriguez
the guatemala play: Guatemalan family’s immigration story becomes three-part archive play. With puppets.
Eliza Bent, Gab Reisman, Rachel Mars
Guilty as Charged: A performance piece about long-enduring PERFECT CRIME impresario Catherine Russel, and what it means to keep acting after everyone else has gone home.
Gail Biederman
My Neuro Topography: My project is a new body of artwork exploring my epilepsy and the EEG procedure.
Lyndsey Bourne
Untitled Purity Ball Play: A play examining the targeted policing of women's bodies in conservative Christian communities.
Nathaniel Braddock
New Music for African Guitar: A suite of new guitar music in African traditional styles from Ghana, Congo, and Mali.
Jen Breach
PALEONTOLOGISTS BEHAVING BALDY and other picture book biographies: At least 4 first draft picture book biographies of scientists, artists and activists who are historically hidden or misrepresented by mythologies of achievement (usually women, LGBTQ+ people, people of color and people living in poverty or enslavement) to help children place both famous and little-known subjects in a context of privilege or lack thereof.
Matthew Capodicasa
Next/Life: A dying woman in her seventies participates in an experimental drug trial that reverse-ages her body back to youth.
Lu Chekowsky
i exist to please You: A memoir of a life lived at the intersection of death, sex and advertising.
Kristiana Colón
Suspension: An Afrofuturist dystopian high school rebellion story where the powercheer squad overthrows their high school's hypermilitarized security force.
Brittney Cooper
How To Love A Feminist: A Book in Three Acts: This book is a Black feminist interrogation of the politics of love and intimate solidarity.
Michael Cyril Creighton
Untitled Michael Cyril Creighton Project: A TV pilot revolving around an LGBTQ Senior Center's staff & participants.
Luz Cruz
Ancestral Pathways, Knowledge from Hurricane Maria: Oral histories of farmers across the Island of Borinken.
Dominic D’Andrea, Gregg Mozgala
Aesthetics of Disability National Theatre Movement: Creating a set of standards and best practices around disability in theatre from conception to fruition.
Maiani da Silva, Kate Outterbrige, Amy Zhang
A Cure for Hysteria: A performance piece that explores the history and relevance of the gendered word “hysteria”—its social connotations and consequences—through the lens of contemporary music and performance art.
Francisca Da Silveira
minor·ity: a play about the deconstruction of language and how the misappropriation of certain buzz words (like community, equity, and diversity) challenges the way we are able to meaningfully communicate with one another in today's society.
Ricardo Dávila
Mother Song: An queer epic fantasy series about the rise of eco-centrism against the ruination of the anthropocene.
Spenser Davis
Wonderstate: A full-length play about a young woman who attempts to rescue her hometown in the Arkansas Delta from the brink of economic collapse.
Christian De Gré Cárdenas
1848: Los Niños Heroes: A contemporary Opera set during the final battle of the Mexican American War as six young heroic Mexican cadets face Robert E. Lee's final attack.
Steph Del Rosso
Life Savers: A commissioned play-in-progress about abortion activism.
Corinne Donly
A Book: A Play: A text that is always both
Kate Douglas
Wonderland: Play about actresses hired to conceal a WWII factory
Daniel Emond, Chloe Treat, Dan Garmon
Kill The Whale: A Musical Odyssey: Innovative live musical and visual album based on Moby-Dick.
Kareem Fahmy, John McManus
Untitled Basketball Play: A young female college basketball star is torn between winning the championship and committing to fasting during Ramadan.
Nia Farrell, Talia Paulette Oliveras, Nile Harris, Nazareth Hassan
[UNTITLED AFROFUTURIST EVENT]: A theatrical and technological experience that starts in the space between dreams and reality and works to close the gap between the two.
Jordan Fein, Ryan Haddad
Dark Disabled Stories: Dark, comedic and twisted solo play about day-to-day disability experience.
Ben Ferguson, Matt Nuernberger
Honey Gut: Ben Ferguson and Matt Nuernberger team up to make music.
Nina Freedman
WHERE-ing: An architecture podcast which explores ‘where we are’, and how we experience, absorb and impact spatial imprints of ‘Belonging’.
Molly Powers Gallagher
The Left Behinds: A coming-of-age ensemble dramedy about school shooting survivors, the evolution of grief, and the cultivation of resiliency.
Rami George
After Kiyoshi: An ongoing exploration of the life and legacy of Philadelphia based activist Kiyoshi Kuromiya.
Jenny Giering, Sean Barry
What We Leave Behind: A one-woman autobiographical journey through chronic illness.
Victoria Haggblom
The Beautiful and the Lost: A full-length album.
Emily Gardner Xu Hall
Cherry Orchard: Inspired by the classic Chekhov play, this musical is a feminist upending of the play: an original book with a folk, jazz, blues and musical theatre score.
Jessica Hecht, Neena Beber, Dionne McClain-Freeney
The Mother, an adaptation for three: Brecht’s The Mother, adapted with choral music, for 3 mothers.
Jessica Huang
Mass Extinction: The Ultimate Reckoning of Georges Cuvier by Volunteer Docent Annie Chung: Mass Extinction! A a Sloan Commission with Manhattan Theatre Club that weighs the contributions against the afflictions brought on by Georges Cuvier, who proved extinction, and adamantly opposed evolution, as well as promoted scientific racism, which ultimately led to eugenics. He mirrors Annie Chung, a retired geologist who reckons with her own legacy of fueling impoverished nations and contributing heavily to global warming.
Jonathan Jacobs
The Girl Who Breathed Dragons: A children's middle grade fantasy novel about a girl born in a toxic factory town who breathes dragons every time she coughs, hiccups, burps, sneezes or yawns.
Gary Jaffe
Baby Talk: When a codependent queer relationship spirals into helplessness, the two boys have to let each other go to grow the fuck up.
C.A. Johnson, Caitlin Cobb-Vialet
I KNOW I KNOW I KNOW: When Zoe’s wife goes missing (again), her lifelong best friends join her on the island off the coast of Virginia where they spent childhood summers: a play about women, friendship, wild ponies, and love that lasts forever.
Mitra Jouhari
Unt. Mitra Jouhari Animation Project: An animation project by Mitra Jouhari, centering the work of Middle Eastern women throughout history.
Emily Kaczmarek, Zoe Sarnak
Afloat: Climate change dystopian action musical -- with heart.
Julia Kots
Only In The Movies: A female-centric take on Woody Allen's Manhattan, that explores gender-based double standards.
Monique Laban
What Is Left to Fear: A haunted house novel that deals with racial and intergenerational trauma.
Jerry Lieblich
Mahinerator: A full-length narrative monologue in a broken made-up dialect embodying the banality of evil.
Jaime Lowe
Breathing Fire: A book about female inmate firefighters.
Sameerah Luqmaan-Harris
Rapture: After genocide ravages her homeland, a broken young woman navigates survival.
Nikhil Mahapatra
Untitled Project: Set in India, a modern-day story of those who sacrifice, those who get sacrificed, and what it means to chase the greater good.
Deborah Margolin
Index to Idioms: An investigation of the startling kinds of love and the new relationships with mortality that come with parenthood.
Ronika McClain
A Thousand Bitches: An autobiographical odyssey through space, time, body and queer romance.
Grace McLean, Eliza Bent
The Light at the End of the Tunnel: Not only a love letter to Gotham, it is a reflection on the USA’s crumbling infrastructure and a call to improve conditions so mass transit can ease CO2 emissions.
Francisco Mendoza
White Play: In a remote location and time, group of children come across a chest full of objects, relics of a culture wholly unknown to them – white culture.
Nicole Miazgowicz
Portrait of a Story: An exploration of creating single portraits of old tales, drawing on classic use of storytelling and symbolism from the Northern Renaissance period.
Christina Milletti, Christine Hume
Now You See Her: A collaborative hybrid project reimagining "girlhood" through both fiction and nonfiction narratives.
Chris Myers
Untitled Maroon Project: Fugitive slaves and others from the margins of colonial society come together as a band of maroons and struggle to make freedom on their own terms as a powerful white planter class battles with itself for ultimate control of their land and their lives.
Colin Nissan
Playground Purgatory Musical: A dark musical comedy based on my New Yorker piece.
Eli Nixon
Peril, Us: An optimistic participatory performance event exploring real and perceived danger.
Keane Nwede, Mango Kat Hernandez
in process: We are developing a music-making process based in nature.
Joél Pérez, Benjamin Velez
Lost City Radio: A musical about a radio show that brings hope to an oppressed country in Latin America.
Lisa Portes, Naomi Iizuka, Paul Hodge
Okuni: A new musical that blows open the story of Okuni, the gender-bending rebel artist who created Kabuki theatre.
Danny Pudi, Arpita Mukherjee
Running (working title): A story of a Polish-Indian son at the crossroads of his adult life as he asks, “Where did I come from? And who am I now?”
Naomi Miyoko Raddatz, Eliza Bent
North Berendo: a film adaptation of a novel by Naomi Miyoko Raddatz about growing up in Scientology
Jennifer Reiter
Artist Guide to Inclusive Programming: Developing guide to inclusive arts programming.
Alex Riad
Faster Horses: A full length play about two women sick of male-dominated start-ups that decide to rebel against the tech industry and create their own app.
Lia Romeo
Wild Wild: A play that explores the problematic legacy of the "Wild West" in the context of Wild West theme park villages.
Dan Rothenberg, Robert Quillen Camp
Franklin’s Key: A family-friendly action-adventure in which a young, self-taught scientist finds herself embroiled in a web of secret societies, mysterious artifacts, and power struggles that endanger the City of Philadelphia.
Jaymes Sanchez
The Cucuy Will Find You: When the Cucuy, a demon from Tex-Mex folklore, disrupts Rey/Reyna's life and the very fabric of reality, Rey must prove that they are a good child.
Kamala Sankaram, Kristin Marting
Joan of the City: A site-specific mixed-reality opera exploring society’s treatment of the homeless.
Madeline Sayat
Untitled Neverland Project: A new adaptation of Peter Pan carrying forward the adventure and curiosity, and dismantling the racism, sexism, and all the colonial baggage.
Caitlin Scarano, Megan Perra
The Ten-Oh-Two: Visual art and poetry on the Porcupine Caribou Herd.
Alexis Scheer
Untitled Birthright Play: Internal conflict collides with international conflict when a group of young Jewish-Americans embark on a Birthright trip to Israel.
Deb Shoval
Untitled Chiapas, Mexico Project: A transnational alliance between a research university and a crop sciences corporation is threatened when a queer Tzozil Maya medical student returns home from Mexico City for her grandmother's funeral and attempts to blow the whistle on corn seed engineered to cause Vitamin A deficiency in autonomous indigenous communities, including her own.
Adrianna Smith
Makar Hands: A poetic-photographic storytelling that explores how work defines identity.
David B. Smith
One Possible Future: Uses hand-worked, digitally woven textiles to tells the story of bio-technical beings flourishing in the face of advanced pollution, catastrophic weather, and limited resources.
Jonathan Spector
Transition: A play about a regional theater undergoing a leadership transition.
Leia Squillace, Kai Norden, Larissa Marten, Julia Gaynor
Seed Planters - Growing Sustainable Theatre Practices: Tending the soil for the environmental sustainability revolution in theatre.
Adam Sussman, Cecelia Raker
bread/blood: An interactive one-woman show/Challah baking class.
Jingjing Tian
Mattress: A story about a young Chinese American who woman returns to Shanghai from New York City after her beloved grandmother passes away. Overcome with grief, estranged from her mother, and suffering from insomnia, she finds herself falling asleep on a mattress in an Ikea in Shanghai. There she befriends a gang of senior citizens—The Young Hearts—who reign over the store with their shenanigans, and finds a sense of belonging for the first time in her life.
Rupy Tut
Finding Ground: I trace the agricultural roots of my ancestors and the ways in which agriculture became a factor in finding belonging upon migration to a new land, to America.
James Anthony Tyler, Pernell Walker, Carl Louis, Regina De Vera
Untitled Workplace Play: Workplace Play about Nurse Staffing Call Center.
Ogemdi Ude
Dig/Hear/Sing/--: A collection of scores, essays, and tools for preserving black social dance.
Sacha Vega, Kat Shannon, Yael Malka
Memory Foam: A collaborative photography project describing the value of communal play.
Nabil Viñas
Los Malos (The Bad Ones): A feature screenplay about three first generation Dominican brothers in NYC.
Ali Viterbi
Weight Loss Competition: Full-length play about a daughter, mother, and grandmother in a weight loss competition.
Sharon Washington
A Colored Mirror: It’s 1917. A glittering Broadway opening. Stars of stage and screen and the literary world pack the house. It’s the social event of the NYC Spring season. The first time an all Black cast will appear in non-stereotypical roles on the Great White Way. A Colored Mirror is a behind-the-scenes look at the players in this monumental theatrical event that was critically acclaimed and then somehow erased from historical memory.
Nicole Weiss
Roz: Song cycle exploring intergenerational trauma & queerness.
Brenton Weyi
My Country, My Country Musical: A new multi-genre musical about the rise and fall of one of the greatest African leaders of the 20th Century, Patrice Lumumba, and his untimely assassination led by the CIA during the Cold War.
Welker White, Damian Young
The Moving Frame - New Approaches in Screen Acting: Written for actors, filmmakers, and those interested in the actor’s process, the book aims to bring readers to a deeper understanding of how affecting stories are told on film.
Leah Zani
American Wasteland: An investigation of high explosives in America, exploring how of why America bombs itself.