MAP Fund is proud to be one of the longest running, private funding sources championing cultural equity and formal innovation in performance practices. In 2024, we awarded $2.883 million across 93 projects, marking the largest one-time award distribution in our organization’s 36-year history.
Each MAP grant comprises a total of $31,000: $25,000 for grantee project development, $5,000 for grantee unrestricted support, and $1,000 microgrant for the grantee to direct to a peer artist of their choice. Grantees will use experimental music, public art installations, opera, multi-sensory media, live electronics, poetry, ritual, musical theater, puppetry, culinary arts and more to explore the politics of memory, healing collective trauma, cultural continuity despite colonization, expanding our collective understanding of disability and confronting catastrophe–from climate to pandemics to the violence of borders.
To read the full announcement, click here.
A durational performance of 321 plays, each two minutes long, celebrating the lives of transgender people.
Illinois
A site-specific dance focusing on female autonomy and community empowerment, set to unfold in a multifamily affordable housing complex in the Cully neighborhood of Portland.
Oregon
by Lynden Harris, Kathryn Hunter-Williams, AJ Layague, and Marc Callahan
This musical theater project brings centerstage true stories of men living on death row, the families who love them, and the officers who work alongside them.
California and North Carolina
by Soft Abilez and Emé Esquivel
A critical take on mass production and consumerism in the States as it relates to and affects: late-stage capitalism, the ever-widening wealth disparity, and a burgeoning environmental cataclysm.
New York
by Matthew Spangler and Salar Nader
A theatre performance with live music that chronicles the 2023 Afghan National Cricket Team’s rise to success, the challenges they faced along the way, and what this success meant for team members and audiences alike.
California
by Cleo Reed
An Afrofuturist multimedia project that synthesizes field recordings, traditional American music genres, and the Black American cultural canon to explore systems, labor, and the body in order to provoke conversations and create distinct changes in the way these canons are embraced.
New York
by Theatre Novi Most Company, Andrei Kureichik, and Barbra Berlovitz
A devised multilingual theater piece based on stories told by members of the post-Soviet diaspora about watching the most brutal European ground war since WWII from afar.
Connecticut, New York, and Minnesota
by Ren Mauney and Telmo Queimado Branco
An immersive performance which addresses the failure of the judiciary system to confront normalized cultures of familial and intimate violence, and proposes restorative justice through collective accountability as an alternative.
North Carolina
This multidisciplinary project uses Bed-Stuy Block Party dance vernacular to study the women of Bed-Stuy, celebrating and highlighting their cultural significance to the community of Brooklyn, NY and Hip-Hop culture during the 1980’s and 1990’s.
New York
by Alethea Pace
A site-specific multimedia performance walk rooted in reclaiming the history of an African Burial Ground in the Hunts Point section of the Bronx.
New York
A two-part performance project that interweaves dance, drag, live-music and set design to portray a Queer cast of performers telling intergalactic stories of Queer love, joy and reclamation.
California
by Glenda Sol Koeraus, Gabriela Granados, and Liliana Morales
An experimental music and dance show that boldly challenges societal expectations related to aging, utilizing the emotive language of flamenco to showcase the inherent strength, resilience, and beauty that come with the aging process.
New York
by Camilla Sims
A non-traditional approach to classical music from the creative perspective of a Black woman connecting to her African roots and bridging African music and classical music by applying regional African music stylings and instrumentation to orchestral form.
New York
by Nazareth Hassan and Free Fool
This project centers two skaters in love who start a rap group and exorcise a demon.
New York, Georgia
by Clarence Holmes, Jr.
Set in Selma, Alabama (1966), this play delves into the struggles faced by an African-American preacher as he strives to exercise his right to vote amidst significant opposition.
Texas
by Melissa Riker / Kinesis Project dance theatre
An outdoor, durational, public art installation and large-scale dance performance that aim to build dialogue and engage communities in the radical, simple acts of care for one another.
New York and Washington
by Gina Young
A theatre piece probing ideas of bodily autonomy, gender expression, self-actualization, and the reclaiming of one’s humanity and human rights.
California and New Mexico
by Jordan Deal
A meta meta improvised social dance and musical (de)composition interrogating the societal zombie, false capes & anti-heros, lures of the American empire, and the intense yearnings of toxic love.
New York and Pennsylvania
by Aparna Ramaswamy, Ranee Ramaswamy, and Ashwini Ramaswamy
This dance performance explores life – forever sprouting, transforming, dissolving, and renewing – through three characters from the Hindu epic The Mahabharata; these myths reveal the power of ancient cultures to reaffirm humanity’s relationship with nature and the sacred.
Minnesota
by Martha Redbone and Aaron Whitby
A music theater production emerging from interviews with multigenerational Indigenous and Native American figures from diverse nations and communities across the US, illuminating their perspectives and experiences and addressing systemic racism, economic disparity, and civil rights.
New York
by Mecca “Meccamorphosis” Verdell
An interactive poetry experience with music and set design, where each poem is a transformation of energy that transforms a black femme’s seven circles of hell to circles of light.
Maryland
by Ambrose Trataris aka Cy Berspace
Breaking the anonymity and isolation of engaging in technological social spaces, this immersive and interactive performance piece imagines how explorations in mixed reality can serve as an integration tool for people inhabiting a trans, queer, or otherwise socially compromised body.
California
by Chachi Perez and David Velazco with Carne Viva Dance Theatre
A multidisciplinary work that highlights the complexity of living the “American Dream,” the navigation of preserving Latine culture and the constant fight of dismantling transgenerational sociopolitical issues.
Florida and Pennsylvania
Set in a cyberpunk universe, DOR@ is a live multimedia poetry performance which satirizes the 1990’s animated cartoon Dora the Explorer to tell a story of borders, detention and liberation.
North Carolina
by Brian Golden
An immersive dance and installation exhibit exploring sensory and processing over- and under-load, allowing attendees to experience how people with Dyspraxia and Auditory Processing Disorders experience the world.
California
by Joe Diebes
An experimental opera for spoken voices structured around the newscast format that critically examines the American media’s ‘voice of authority’ in relation to the Middle East.
California and New York
by Lisa Parra
A solo interdisciplinary dance work, based on an audio recording of a family reunion, that archives a history and shines a spotlight on the artist’s first generation and immigrant relatives’ presence that helped create the vibrant communities in Boyle Heights, California.
New York
Developed by a dancer diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis, this movement piece explores the body’s ability to enter states of complete awareness, both individually and collectively.
New York
by milissa orzolek/abandoned ships
Inspired by an impending feeling of doom due to the climate crisis and a desire for joy, this project explores how language is connected to our ability to recognize and understand patterns in ourselves and the world around us.
Louisiana
A multi medium performing arts production re-introducing Diné wisdom through the origin story of wellness and evolution, utilizing traditional ways and teachings in order to survive and be successful on this earth.
Minnesota, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, and Utah
by Ensemble Decipher, Joseph Bohigian, and Khatchadour Khatchadourian
An evening-length work for live electronics, voice, and video projection about the life of the Georgian-born Soviet-Armenian visionary film director Sergei Parajanov.
California
by Naz Riahi
A one-woman show exploring desire and delusion through the artist’s confounding childhood obsession with Michael Jackson and her ambition to become an assassin.
California
by Chloë Bass
A live-performance activation of public broadcast and emergency management systems in New York City aimed at utilizing these systems to facilitate public collective action, offering the opportunity for individuals to be resources towards the care of others.
New York
by Taylor Graham and Jerimy Rivera
A dance and sound performance of 5 dancers embodying the formation of psychosomatic images and moving through the challenging process of consciously healing and re-shaping the self through confronting core beliefs.
New York
by Atra Asdou
A semi-autobiographical dark comedy satire following five generations of Assyrian women reclaiming their stories, from The Ottoman Empire to modern-day U.S.A., that explores history, family, and dysfunction, as narrated by a British guy.
Illinois and New York
by Ben Levine, Nadia Adame, and AXIS Dance Company
A dance project that uses technological innovation as a tool for artistic generation by developing robotic technologies to research new movement possibilities for disabled and non-disabled dancers.
California and D.C.
A play where a Queer Council of the not-so-distant future will argue and hear arguments centered around the contentious debate of Queer people’s potential migration from planet Earth and decide to leave or stay and take the heat.
Minnesota
by Vichet Chum
Told with humor, heart-forward characters, dynamic poetry, and culminating in a lavish Cambodian wedding ceremony, this piece celebrates Khmer identity, queerness, and embraces the complicated histories that shape who we are and want to become.
Massachusetts and New York
by Sarah Loucks, Matt Spain, and Ann Marie Dorr
A devised performance that explores the history of American labor practices through the artist disassembling and reassembling a 1983 Dodge Rampage.
Arkansas, New York, and Texas
A performance installation that uses movement, sound, interactive garments, and woven tapestries to imagine our environmental impact on the planet and the irrevocably altered future.
New York
by Lelis Brito
An immersive multi-modal Spanish performance party telling the story of a family of graverobbers living in a Caribbean cemetery fifty years in the future when the days are hotter, water is scarcer and they are torn between their own desires for growth and the pressures to take on upper class values.
Minnesota
by Blake Worthey
A genre-bending performance that challenges theatrical conventions to explore what kinds of romance do we expect from our Rom-Com stories.
Arkansas
by Ogemdi Ude
A dance theater project exploring the history and physicality of Southern majorette dance, a style that originated within Historically Black Colleges and Universities in the 1960s.
New York
by Psalmayene 24, Kokayi, and Raymond O. Caldwell
A musical unpacking iconic former DC Mayor Marion Barry’s complexities and contradictions; examining his life through the racial systems that he navigated in the 1960’s-1990’s.
D.C. and Indiana
by Modesto “Flako” Jimenez, Pedro Fortunato, and Brisa Areli Muñoz
A multi-phase, multidisciplinary experience at the intersection of migration and dementia, chronicling the 40-year journey of the artist’s grandmother in America, from landing to passing.
New York
by The Incredible, Edible Akynos and PJ Starr
A socially engaged theatrical performance project embedded in the transformative idea that sex work is part of our human future and that theories and practice of sex work developed by sex workers are essential in melding technologies, experiences, and paths for radical tomorrows.
Arizona and New York
by Sonny K. Mehta and Neelima Shukla-Bhatt, PhD
An interfaith interdisciplinary performance that explores and amplifies the legacy of Mirabai, a 16th-century female Hindu saint, poet, and singer from Rajasthan, India, through a concert and stage dialogue.
Massachusetts and Texas
A cultural performance highlighting the artist’s precolonial bisayan roots through hip hop, dance, instruments, and visual art.
California and Oregon
A participatory performance interweaving movement, text, and music, framed by a community ritual derived from the Navratri festival of Gujarat, India and rituals of postmodern choreographer Anna Halprin—to honor the gifts of our ancestors and the land, and release what we no longer need.
Colorado and New York
A piano quartet that investigates two main arenas: classical music’s slow progress in supporting women composers, and the societal expectation that a woman’s body be a hospitable place to create new life.
Pennsylvania and Texas
by Anthony Davis and Diana DuMelle
A bilingual opera that tells the story of one Mexican migrant family’s journey, evolving perceptions and shifting discussions through authentic depictions of border realities.
California
by Fanxi Sun
A theater-in-the-round project that presents a slice of life of the Asian diaspora in the United States.
D.C. and New York
A performance work that maps complex stories of Black humanity on Chicago’s Westside, exploring acts of memory, pleasure, and ancestral connection.
Illinois
by Corinna Schulenburg, Heather Cohn, and Flux Theatre Ensemble
An ensemble-devised ritual performance in which artists, and then audience, engage in conversations with versions of themselves from an alternate universe where the COVID-19 pandemic never happened.
New York
by The TEAM, Rachel Chavkin, and Zhailon Levingston
This play weaves dramatic text, historical artifacts, and transcripts from our creative process to explore how, in the aftermath of slavery, white-, Black-, and POC-identifying Americans might move through history together.
D.C., California, North Carolina, New Hampshire, and New York
This opera focuses on the diversity and flexibility of gender and racial identities in the West at the end of the Reconstruction period, and how this period and locale conflicts with the supposed ‘unassailable’ individualistic freedom of the ‘classic’ frontiersperson.
New York
by So + Bex
An intimate performance exploring Chinese diaspora, imperialism, and racial identity through the eyes of 2 queer friends from Hong Kong and Singapore on a research mission to figure out why their ancestors left China.
New York
by Meesh Sara Fradkin and Andy Slater
An interactive, immersive, and multisensory sound installation and performance, where the actions or inactions of audience members in the waiting room inform parameters of the score in the performance room.
Illinois, New York, Quebec
by Dr. Ana Maria (Tekina-eirú) Maynard
A play with music and dance offering the undocumented memories of elders to a new generation; bringing oral history to life through a community theatre project that raises awareness of forgotten elements from Puerto Rico’s rich heritage and pays tribute to unsung heroes.
Puerto Rico and Texas
A modern queer-, trans-, and Black-led stage musical in the Black American musical tradition about a young woman-loving-woman relationship that develops in and out of hardship, trauma, and forced community inside a mental health institution’s under-21 ward.
New York
by J.E. Hernández, Priscella Uvalle, and J. Mae Barizo
A transformative cuicatl-opera project illuminating the often-overlooked Indigenous pre-Hispanic roots of Mexican culture, focusing on the visceral, maternal bond and its cultural implications.
California, New York, and Texas
A performance structure and interactive environment that incorporates a sonic backdrop using the non-anthropocentric and momentary structures of snowflakes at different levels of magnification to create sounds reflecting the actual geometries of snow crystals.
Massachusetts
A dance theater piece that deconstructs words to expand perspectives on political rhetoric, the mechanics of public speaking, and the manipulation of meaning.
Pennsylvania
A four-hour durational performance work that responds to the history of the American Academy of Arts and Letters by drawing attention to the afterlives of slavery, the built environment, and Blackness as non-performance.
Pennsylvania and New York
by Tyler Holmes
This piece uses ambient experimental music and noise, in conversation with experimental filmmaking, to explore the theme of life cycles through the lens of two characters who take their fates into their own hands.
California
by Jason Wang and Jonathan Chang
This play follows the lives of three Asian-American 6th graders as they are thrust into a vigorous test prep center where they will spend their summers and weekends preparing for the Specialized High School Admissions Test (SHSAT) in New York City.
New York
by Wendy Jehlen and Eric Raynaud
An immersive hybrid performance for three dancers, created to be performed in a dome with immersive spatial sound and 3D 360° projection, which engages with a story of the disappearance of ecosystems.
New York
A theatre production that centers the artist’s aphasia (a language disorder) journey and his relentless determination to regain his voice.
Illinois
An immersive performance project exploring labor inequity, diasporic survival, and inherited generational traumas in the wake of racist and sexist scapegoating of Pilipinx workers.
California and Michigan
by Christopher “Mad Dog” Thomas
A multimedia performance exploring the radical transformation of Chicago’s Juke communities over the last 20 years and how this has changed the dance styles and music styles, as well as impacted its dancers as human beings, mostly Black Chicagoans, and as Black artists.
Illinois
by Angelica Maria, West Coast Strings, and Harmony Vocalists
A 10 piece song and poetry presentation that combines classical instruments, a soothing choir, and storytelling that challenges the ideas and perceptions of Chicana and Mexican women, and creates a new modality for healing.
California
by The Haus of Glitter Dance Company
This dance opera will explore the unheard narratives of San Antonio, TX, especially anti-colonial and abolitionist histories that have been overlooked or silenced throughout the intricate history of Texas becoming a republic and now, a state.
Rhode Island and Texas
Created in the spirit of Eco-Artivism, this multisensory, site-responsive performance ritual centers the voices and creativity of matriarch elders using Land Dance, biomimicry, performance ritual, and sourcing embodied knowledge as a form of contemporary ancestral reclamation and guidance.
California
by Tom Lee
A solo mask and puppetry performance that presents two characters (puppeteer and puppet) who switch back and forth between perceived identities as lovers, rivals, and caretakers.
Illinois and New York
by e. Franklin
A multidisciplinary immersive performance that aims to heighten participants’ understanding of intersectional healing/repair and to build practical skills in advancing this notion through role play and experiential learning.
California
This solo music- and narrative-based stage performance is a collection of seemingly unrelated stories and anecdotes that swirl and dance with a live musical score created through looped and effected trumpet and clarinet, along with basic household objects.
Oregon and Washington
by Juanita Cardenas and Ryan Shinji Murray
Using performance art, circus, puppetry, dance, and theater, this project tells a creation myth that imagines a parallel evolution in which the world builds in solidarity.
New York
by Brad E. Rose
A multidisciplinary live music performance with an accompanying video that viscerally explores the heavy metal and noise pollution of Grand Lake, Oklahoma, encouraging thought about our contributions to climate change.
Oklahoma
by Lani Asunción and Ellie Tiglao
An immersive event that melds culinary arts and visual storytelling through performance and video to explore the themes of colonialism and its influence on Filipinx diaspora narratives.
California and Massachusetts
by Gabriel “MoFundamentals” Gutierrez
An evening length dance piece informed from the artist’s own foster care and adoption journey, aimed at visibilizing foster, adoptee, houseless, street dance, and P’urhépecha narratives weaving between past and present traditions.
California
by Guerilla Opera, Urban Jazz Dance Company, and Elisabet Curbelo
A work of interdisciplinary opera theater that centers American Sign Language and non-verbal communication as the main narrative language, investigating themes of societal oppression, communication and transcendence.
California, Massachusetts, and Utah
A music composition in two movements that tells the story of the distinctive mind & unusual music experiments of a man and his fifty-year struggle with schizophrenia.
Massachusetts
by Raha Shojaei
A multifaceted documentary and performance exploration of Iranian women’s narratives that takes inspiration from the rich tapestry of Iranian myths found in the Shahnameh.
California
by Indira Leneman aka Laroye Aña, James “Cricket” Colter, Tsiambwom “T” Akuchu, and Vanessa Neva Verdoodt
A collaborative performance for dancers and community members to reconnect with their roots through Bantu cultural elements, Afro Cuban dance, and House dance.
California
by Héctor Jaime
Featuring an all-BIPOC cast, this dance production will express and share the culture of shamanic animal shapeshifting abilities with Mexican Indigenous roots.
California
by Edisa Weeks
Through craft-making, discussions, visual art, theater, and dance, the audience is taken on an interactive journey to experience a land that can be sculpted, destroyed, and rebuilt again with more plastic.
New York
Drawing upon the history of the artist’s grandfather Randolph Bromery and of the local Tuskegee area, this performance is dedicated to the development of modes of commemoration and legacy work that resist notions of permanence.
Alabama
An interdisciplinary music, dance and multimedia project – a deeply personal exploration of cultural memory and diaspora, in the Gullah Geechee communities of the South Carolina low country and beyond.
New York and South Carolina
A multi-media dance production and community workshop that builds bridges of hope to support the future of Haiti and depart Haitian stories from tragedy through storytelling.
Florida
by Maura García, Amado Espinoza, and Yura Sapi
Incorporating dance, song, textile art and storytelling, this intercultural Indigenous performance project centers the process of creation, connection to the land, and the sharing of stories.
Missouri and Texas
by Yin Mei and Anne A. Cheng
This performance piece explores how Asian American women occupy their own bodies in light of the history that bears down on them.
New Jersey and New York
by Brandy Hoang Collier, Clare Fuyuko Bierman and Erika Ji
In this musical, five Asian American women are pulled into a fantastical dreamscape, where subconscious thoughts manifest as real-life rockstars and movie monsters.
Minnesota and New York
We are grateful to our 2024 reviewer cohort for their thoughtful participation in this year’s grant selection process.
MAP Fund’s work is made possible through partnership with Doris Duke Foundation, Mellon Foundation, Howard Gilman Foundation, and Walder Foundation. Additional support comes from Jerome Foundation, The National Endowment for the Arts, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, the New York State Council on the Arts, and individual donors.
Many thanks to the 2024 grantees for providing the above images, which were taken by the photographers and/or include art from Alex Bershaw, Allison Barr, Alon Koppel Photography, Amber Johnston, Angel Origgi, Blake Brown, Blake Worthey, Bradly Dever Treadaway, Carlos David, Chris Banks, Christina Corpse, Christine Southworth, Cruz Media, Daniel Oxenhandler, David De Silva, Department of Film and Theater at San Jose State University, Duncan Tonatiuh, Dwain Johnson Photography, Elliot Slade, Emily Farthing, Emily Smeja, Eric Fernandez, Golden Lion Photography, Gracie Hagan, Greg Inda, Hana Sun Lee, Heather Cohn, Hisae Aihara, Houston Grand Opera, Ian Douglas, Jaime Martin, James Gamble, Jen Eastman, Jenna Curia, Jenni(f)er Tamayo, Jenny Wheat, Joan Marcus, Josh Spencer, Julie Lemberger, Karen Wise, Keith Sikes, Kyle Bondeson, Kyrre Kristoffersen, Laroye Ana, Lelis Brito, Leonardo Rivas, Mallika Chandaria, Mamadou Sewa Bah, Maya Ciarrocchi, Meg Moore, Melodica Drone and Bach Quartet, Molly Magnusson, Mo Petty-Ashmeade, Mujale Chisebuka, Naima Green, Natalia Sun, Noraa James, OGATA (courtesy of @ogata_photo), Pantografata, Puerto Rican Cultural Center, Pursuit Films, Rey Londres, Richard Termine, Rita Sailor, Rita Tinega, Robbie Sweeney, Round House Theatre, Rudy Gerson, Sebastian Elias, Shun Yong, Simon Soong, Slade Segerson, Soft Abilez and Emé Esquivel, Sonny K. Mehta and Neelima Shukla-Bhatt, PhD, Sophia Sagaradze, Stephan Stumpf, Steven Gunther (REDCAT NOW Festival 2017), Sydney J. Allen, Taylor Ann Photography, Terrence Hamilton, Terry Brown, Timothy Gurczak Photography, Toby Tenenbaum, Trevor McKay, Tyler Holmes, Van Ninzie Edouard, Veda Keda, VerneeNorman, Whitney Browne, Xiao Qian Lin, and Zhang Cong.