Theater grants go to 13

Five regional theater companies have received $110,000 grants from the Pew Center for the Arts and Humanities Philadelphia Theatre Initiative.

The initiative provided $960,000 in grant support for a total of 13 theater companies, presenters, and independent artists this year, the Pew reported.

The grant has allowed the Arden Theatre Company to commission Jordan Harrison and Richard Gray to create a musical based on Hans Christian Andersen's final story, The Flea and the Professor.

Malvern's People's Light and Theatre Company will produce Pulitzer Prize- and Academy Award-winner Horton Foote's Dividing the Estate, the story of a once-wealthy, now-broke family.

The 2011 Philadelphia Live Arts & Philly Fringe Festival will feature the U.S. premiere of The Devil and Mister Punch, which takes its inspiration from Punch and Judy puppet shows, directed by Julian Crouch.

Lynn Nottage's 2009 Pulitzer Prize-winning Ruined, set in Congo against a backdrop of violence, will serve as focal point of the Philadelphia Theatre Company's 35th-anniversary season. It marks a continuation of the theater's commitment to contemporary American writers.

The Wilma Theater's first-ever Shakespeare production, Macbeth, directed by Blanka Zizka, will explore the play's contemporary political resonance and will feature percussion and choreography.

Eight other organizations and artists also received funding through the theatrical initiative. They are:

1812 Productions, Your Show of Shows and Laughter on the 23rd Floor, $83,000; Act II Playhouse, Ambler, Montgomery County, The Pride of Parnell Street, $60,000; Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts, The Cripple of Inishmaan, $75,000; Brat Productions, Are We Not Men? The Devo Musical, $50,000; Inis Nua Theatre Company, Dublin by Lamplight, $14,500; New Paradise Laboratories, Extremely Public Displays of Privacy, $52,000; Philadelphia-based Thaddeus Phillips, Whale Optics, $20,000; Theatre Exile, The Lieutenant of Inishmore, $60,000.