Trinity Repertory Company announced the company has been awarded a Doris Duke Charitable Foundation Grant through the Foundation’s Building Demand for the Arts program. The award supports a partnership with Laurie Woolery with an exploration grant of $40,000 to develop a stronger, mutually beneficial relationship with the Latino community in Rhode Island through representative theatre. Eighteen awards were made nationwide, totaling $600,000.

“We are thrilled to have received this award, and look forward to deepening our relationship with the Latino communities in Rhode Island,” stated artistic director Curt Columbus. “It is an honor to have Laurie spearheading this project and exploring what the future holds for our community, our stages and our audience.”

The Building Demand for the Arts program offers two types of grants: Exploration grants, which support investigative conversations between artists and organizations about ways to build demand for the performing arts, and Implementation grants, which support the implementation of previously crafted plans to build arts demand. For more information and full list of recipients, visit www.ddcf.org.

Laurie Woolery is a director, playwright, educator, facilitator and producer who has worked at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Goodman Theatre, Cornerstone Theater Company, South Coast Repertory, Mark Taper Forum, Denver Center, East West Players, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Los Angeles Theater Center, Inge Center for the Arts, Plaza de la Raza/Red CAT, Fountain Theatre, Greenway Center for the Arts, Ricardo Montalban, Deaf-West Theatre, Highways Performance Space, Sundance Playwrights Lab as well as the inaugural season of the Sundance Children's Theatre. Laurie has created new works with diverse communities from incarcerated women to residents of a small Kansas town devastated by a tornado. Laurie creates site-specific work that range from a working sawmill in Eureka, California to the banks of the Los Angeles River. Her solo play, “Salvadorian Moon/African Sky,” was commissioned by Cornerstone Theater Company and performed in their citywide Festival of Faith. Laurie is the former Associate Artistic Director of Cornerstone Theater Company, Conservatory Director at South Coast Repertory and artist-in-residence at Hollygrove Children's Home in Los Angeles, and the current Associate Director of The Public Theater's Public Works program. Laurie teaches at USC, Cal Arts, Citrus College, California State University Northridge and serves on the Board of the Latino Producers Action Network, Network of Ensemble Theaters and the Children's Theatre Foundation of America.

The State Theater of Rhode Island, Trinity Repertory Company is now in its 52nd season. Since its founding in 1963, Trinity Repertory Company has been one of the most respected regional theaters in the country. Featuring the last permanent resident acting company in America, Trinity Rep presents a balance of world premiere, contemporary, and classic works for an estimated annual audience of approximately 110,000. Since 1963, the theater has produced 63 world premieres, mounted national and international tours, and, through its MFA program, trained hundreds of new actors and directors.

Subscriptions for the 2016-2017 season “Ghosts of the Past, Dreams of the Future” are now on sale. The season includes “Beowulf: A Thousand Years of Baggage,” book and lyrics by Jason Craig and music by Dave Malloy, “Appropriate” by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, “The Mountaintop” by Katori Hall, Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” the world premiere of “Faithful Cheaters” by Deborah Salem Smith and “Fuente Ovejuna” by Lope de Vega Carpio.

For more information and to purchase tickets, call the box office at 351-4242 or visit Trinity Rep's website at www.trinityrep.com.