When playwright Gemma Irish got a call that she had won the McKnight fellowship for playwrights, she was ecstatic.
She had applied six or seven times for the $25,000 prize, hoping that it will help lift her career and also buy time to make work.
“It’s validating to be in the company of the great artists that have won,” said Irish, who is working on a play called “Eat the Rich,” a comedy about “people literally eating the rich after they run out of food.”
The awards, administered by the Playwrights’ Center, have supported those working in the performing arts for decades and have been a part of the ecosystem that’s helped undergird Minnesota’s artistic vitality.
Irish is one of several creative artists to win the McKnight. In all, the center is handing out $140,000 to five Minnesotans and one national artist. All the awardees also have access to a portion of another $50,000 for travel and research.
Mikell Sapp, who played the title character Blue earlier this year in Penumbra Theatre’s “Paradise Blue,” is another McKnight awardee.
“Financially, this is the first big award I’ve won, and it couldn’t have come at a better time,” Sapp said. “I got my career started here in 2011 in my first professional gig at Pillsbury House Theatre. And to be recognized by my peers, I couldn’t be prouder.”
For Isabel Nelson, co-founder and leader of TransAtlantic Love Affair company, winning a McKnight now is especially gratifying because of how her company works. TLA devises stories using dance, song and other forms to create haunting shows. Nelson’s latest was “Red and the Mother Wild,” which riffed on Little Red Riding Hood at Minneapolis’ Center for Performing Arts.
