Mass. Cultural Council Rewards Emerson Creativity

Six Emerson faculty and staff, and at least 10 Emerson/Marlboro alumni received Grants for Creative Individuals from the Massachusetts Cultural Council. The awards of $5,000 each supported creative projects in Media Arts, Visual Arts, Literature, Theatre and Dance, and Multidisciplinary work.

Media Arts

School of Film, Television, and Media Arts affiliated faculty member Bob Nesson received the grant for his documentary film, Holding Up the Sky. The film follows two formerly incarcerated men with life sentences who now lead successful professional and personal lives.

The core of the project was inspired by Nesson’s former students Ryan Egan ’13, Christine Maroon ’13, Megan McLoughlin ’13, and Gina Varamo ’13, whose own documentary, Re-Enter: My New Community, followed three formerly incarcerated men who worked at Haley House Cafe in Roxbury—a non-profit that trained them on skills pertaining to food service and amalgamating back to a life after prison. Both of these films will be screened at the Bright Theater in the Paramount Center on Tuesday, March 24, at 7:00 p.m.

School of Film affiliated faculty member Margo Guernsey is in the early stages of a short documentary that captures her journey as an adoptive mom and the emotional complexity of cherishing a family that is born out of loss. The grant will help pay for cinematography and other production expenses, aiding the experimental lens she uses to explore ways to heal and repair through this film.

Thanks to the Mass. Cultural Council unrestricted funds, School of Film Professor Cristina Kotz Cornejo applied for the grant with more than one project under her belt. This opportunity encourages applicants to widen their range of work and “…it allows the artist to potentially spread the funds over a few projects depending on the immediate needs,” said Cornejo, who has one film in post-production and two projects in development.

Also receiving grants for Media Arts: SOF Associate Professor Julia Halperin, David Sabot ’22, and Shana Figueroa, MFA ’24.

Theatre

Performing Arts Assistant Professor Ilana Ransom Toeplitz earned a grant in support of her new musical, Late, a coming-of-age musical about a group of high school friends trying to grapple with contemporary brokenness in an era of school shootings. Toeplitz “took almost the entire recently graduated design team of Emerson Stage’s Head Over Heels and brought them on to design Late,” she said, on top of hiring two of her current students, Avery Piazza ’26 and Juliet Simon ’26. The show, still in development, had a run March 6-14 with a full-house and standing ovation.

Literature

In Ploughshares Managing Editor Rachel Dillon’s poetry manuscript-in-progress, she explores the wilderness as a site of healing and harm while rooting herself in the history of Cape Ann’s Dogtown Woods. “From the accused witches who lived in Dogtown in the 1700s; to Anne Natti, a woman murdered in Dogtown in the 1980s; to my mother, who moved to Cape Ann in 2019; to me, a poet concerned with the future of our shared world. Dogtown is my foil; its ghosts sing my name.” With the resources from the Mass. Cultural Council grant, Dillon hopes to finalize her manuscript honoring the centuries of women who have found themselves in Dogtown.

Also receiving grants for Literature: poets Janaka Stucky ’00 and Myles Taylor ’18.

Multidisciplinary

School of Film Assistant Professor Thato Mwosa ’01 will allocate her Mass. Cultural Council grant to her festival-nominated short film Until Further Notice. In the film, an African trans woman living in Boston must decide whether to return to Africa or wait for detainment at the hands of Immigration and Customs Enforcement when her asylum is canceled. The story is a proof of concept and operates in the same universe as Mwosa’s feature film, Fire Flies Don’t Burn, which focuses on the trans woman’s niece and the familial disconnect between first-generation immigrants and second-generation children.

Also receiving grants for Multidisciplinary projects: actress/comedian/life coach Awet Teame ’99; actress/novelist Trinette Faint ’97, MA ’08 and Marlboro Class of 2009 graduate and folk musician Helen Hummel.

Visual Arts and Community-Based Arts

Ceramicist Heather Martin ’22 and filmmaker Nicholson Thibault, MFA ’24, won grants for Visual Arts, and dancer and storyteller Noel Staples-Freeman ’87 received funding for Community-Based Arts.