Theatre Communications Group Announces Major Support from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for TCG Books
Style Magazine Newswire | 10/25/2021, 1:40 p.m.
heatre Communications Group (TCG), the national organization for theatre, is pleased to announce that The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation will support the expansion of TCG Books through a two-year, $1,000,000 total grant. This investment will allow TCG Books to: recover from the staffing impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic; increase the total number of books published annually; partner with public and university libraries to diversify their collections; and reprint classic works by Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) authors that have fallen out of print.
Additionally, this support will help launch Illuminations, a series of classic works by Black playwrights, curated by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins. The series will launch with the publication of Alice Childress’s 1955 play, Trouble in Mind, and will feature an essay written by Jacobs-Jenkins. Over the next five years, Illuminations will publish two works annually, each with a new essay written by a noted playwright or theatre-maker.
“Research from the National Endowment for the Arts shows that the number of people reading plays is rising, driven by a younger and more racially diverse generation of readers,” said Teresa Eyring, executive director and CEO, TCG. “Robust sales from TCG Books during the pandemic have also shown that when audiences couldn’t go to the theatre, they were reading plays. With critical support from our longtime partner, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, TCG Books will meet this rising demand by publishing more plays and disseminating them more widely. We’re especially pleased to partner with TCG Books playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins on the Illuminations series, which will help restore classic works from Black playwrights to their rightful place in the canon.”