Chicago, IL – The United States Artists (USA) announced today that DG Council member BRANDEN JACOBS-JENKINS and DG member DIANNE MCINTYRE are recipients of the 2020 USA Fellow award. Each of the 50 recipients receive a $50,000 cash award of unrestricted funds. President & CEO Deana Haggag of USA notes, “The 2020 class is the largest cohort of Fellows we have awarded since we relocated to Chicago, and each and every one of them stands out as a visionary influence in their respective field.”
Jacobs-Jenkins is a Brooklyn-based playwright whose plays include Girls (Yale Rep), Everybody (Signature Theatre; Pulitzer Prize finalist), War (world premiere, Yale Rep; LCT3), Gloria (Vineyard Theatre; Pulitzer Prize finalist), Appropriate (Signature Theatre; OBIE Award), An Octoroon (Soho Rep.; OBIE Award), and Neighbors (The Public Theater). Residency Five playwright at Signature Theatre and serves on the faculty at University of Texas-Austin.
McIntyre is a dancer, choreographer, researcher, mentor, director, producer, and dance-driven dramatist. She received a 2016 Doris Duke Artist Award and choreographs for concert, theatre, and film. She conceived and directed signature dance-driven dramas such as Take Off from a Forced Landing, I Could Stop on a Dime and Get Ten Cents Change, and Open the Door, Virginia! For film and television, she choreographed Beloved, Langston Hughes: The Dream Keeper, and Miss Evers’ Boys for which she received an Emmy nomination. www.diannemcintyre.com
USA Fellowships are annual $50,000 unrestricted awards recognizing the most compelling artists working and living in the United States, in all disciplines, at every stage of their career. Each year, individual artists and collaboratives are anonymously nominated to apply by a geographically diverse and rotating group of artists, scholars, critics, producers, curators, and other arts professionals. Applications are reviewed by discipline-specific panels who select the finalists, which are then approved by our Board of Trustees.
