National Endowment for the Arts Awards $10,000 to Hartford Stage in Support of Anastasia

Hartford, CT – December 14, 2015 – The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) has announced awards totaling more than $27.6 million in its first round of funding for fiscal year 2016, including an Art Works award of $10,000 to Hartford Stage to provide production support for the new musical Anastasia in May.

In its first 50 years, the NEA awarded more than $5 billion in grants to recipients in every state and U.S. jurisdiction, the only arts funder in the nation to do so. The Art Works category supports the creation of work and presentation of both new and existing work, lifelong learning in the arts, and public engagement with the arts through 13 arts disciplines or fields.

“We are grateful that the NEA continues to support works of artistic merit,” said Michael Stotts, Managing Director of Hartford Stage. “Our much-anticipated production of Anastasia is an ambitious undertaking requiring additional resources, so we are thankful for this grant.”

This generous gift from the NEA for Anastasia will assist in continuing Artistic Director Darko Tresnjak’s vision of developing and presenting new plays and musicals at Hartford Stage. Specifically, the Art Works-funded project will span from the initial rehearsal period through the run of the production, enabling the theatre to host a variety of special events designed to directly engage patrons with the cast, artistic staff, and key theatre personnel.

The creative team behind Anastasia includes Director Tresnjak, 2014 Tony Award winner for Best Director of a Musical for A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder; the Tony Award-winning writers of the Broadway classic Ragtime Terrence McNally (book), Stephen Flaherty (music), and Lynn Ahrens (lyrics); and Joshua Bergasse (choreography), Tony Award nominee for On the Town.

Anastasia provides a unique opportunity to engage a wide-ranging audience – including children, students and families – to learn about monumental historical events in a thoroughly entertaining format while exploring how politics quickly turned life upside down for an entire region and the simplicity of a fairytale about a young woman attempting to find her footing in the world.

Anastasia runs at Hartford Stage from May 12 through June 12, 2016. Tickets for all shows start at $25. For group discounts (10 or more), contact Theresa MacNaughton at 860-520-7114. For all other tickets, please call the Hartford Stage box office at 860-527-5151 or visit www.hartfordstage.org.

HARTFORD STAGE

Now in our 52^nd year, Hartford Stage is one of the nation’s leading resident theatres, known for producing innovative revivals of classics and provocative new plays and musicals, including 68 world and American premieres, as well as offering a distinguished education program, which reaches more than 20,000 students annually.

Hartford Stage has earned many of the nation’s most prestigious awards, including four 2014 Tony Awards for A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder on Broadway, including Best Musical and Best Direction of a Musical by Darko Tresnjak, and the 1988 Tony Award for Outstanding Regional Theatre. Other national honors include Outer Critics Circle, Drama Desk, OBIE, and New York Critics Circle awards. Hartford Stage has produced nationally renowned titles, including the New York transfers of Enchanted April, The Orphans' Home Cycle; Resurrection (later retitled Through the Night); and Quiara Alegría Hudes’ Water by the Spoonful, winner of the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

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