Associate Professor Jennifer Schlueter and Assistant Professor Sarah Neville Awarded Grant

December 10, 2018

Associate Professor Jennifer Schlueter and Assistant Professor Sarah Neville Awarded Grant

Department of Theatre

Associate Professor Jennifer Schlueter and Assistant Professor Sarah Neville have been awarded a $14,000 Ohio State Energy Partners grant for their proposal “Pith and Marrow: A Season of Experimental Performance.” Across 2019-2020, Neville and Schlueter will co-curate a season of Columbus-created experimental, storefront, or site-specific performance—including work from Lord Denney’s Players, which Neville produces, and the Lab Series, which Schlueter produces—featuring pre- and post-show conversations and lectures on the role of space in live performance. Qualitative data gathering on audience issues that arise at such venues, including parking, accessibility, seating comfort, and hospitality, as well as producers’ sense of met and unmet performance and rehearsal venue needs, will be embedded in this work. Concurrent with this experiential and qualitative study, Neville and Schlueter will partner with the John Glenn College of Public Affairs to undertake a feasibility study to map and catalog extant live performance venues at Ohio State and in the city of Columbus and place that information in comparison with venues at universities and cities of similar size. Out of this qualitative, quantitative, and community-building work, Neville and Schlueter will craft an evidence-based proposal for the creation of a multi-use nonprofit performance space—a kind of Idea Foundry for live performance—compatible with the needs of the Columbus performing arts community.