GreenStage Guilford Live Arts has awarded grants of $5,000 to three Connecticut performing artists to create new works and premiere them at GreenStage’s next performing arts festival. The recipients are pianist, composer, author and educator Jen Allen; playwright Laura Thoma; and Jessica Ruhlin, artistic director of Bodies Never Lie Dance Company.
Each artist will have approximately one year to create new work and prepare it for performance in a prime slot at the 2025 GreenStage Live Arts Festival, scheduled for August 10-17, 2025. The biennial festival, centered on the historic Guilford Green, will feature some 25 performances in dance, drama and music, plus workshops, interactive events, visual art and activities for kids.
The recipients, chosen by panels of Shoreline-area community members with expertise and/or knowledge in relevant artistic disciplines, are:
Jen Allen, Bloomfield, Music
Jen Allen is a jazz pianist, composer, author and educator who performs throughout the world as the leader of her own bands and as a member of other creative music ensembles. Her award-winning proposal for GreenStage is an extended composition called “One,” which celebrates the unity that exists among us but is not always apparent as we move through fast-paced lives in divisive times. It’s a multi-movement work for piano, bass, drums/percussion, voice, guitar, cello and projected imagery, and will feature audience interaction. (Lindsey Victoria photo)
Laura Thoma, Guilford, Drama
Laura Thoma is a trauma-informed, internationally published playwright and award-winning short film writer. She's an alum of the Kennedy Center Playwrights Intensive, the National Playwrights Symposium, Pawling Theatre Exchange Playwrights Residency, the Desert Playwrights Retreat and THE OUTRAGE: A Queer Writer's Residency. Her play, "Letter to My Soul," will tell the story of two queer women who live in different places and different times and build an unlikely friendship through time and space. She performed a reading of her play "Yours in Words" at the 2023 GreenStage festival.
Jessica Ruhlin, Bodies Never Lie, Dance
The artistic director of Bodies Never Lie Dance Company, Jess is a dancer, choreographer and educator who’s performed with the Louisville Ballet Company, St. Louis Ballet, Roxey Ballet and several contemporary companies in New York. Her award-winning proposal, “By My Bootstraps,” will be a ballet for four dancers, using imagination, collaboration and humor to tell a story of triumph over limitation. Jess is a Type-1 diabetic who choreographs, teaches and collaborates with neuroscientists to research the effects of movement on the brain and nervous system. She’s passionate about increasing self-acceptance and visibility for dancers with disabilities.
In four cycles since 2018, GreenStage has granted 14 Artists’ Awards and a total of $42,500 to Connecticut performers for the creation of new works in music, drama and dance. GreenStage established the awards to support the creativity of professional Connecticut artists and provide a vehicle for premiering new work at the GreenStage festival—while in the process helping create more fertile ground for innovative performers to make Connecticut their artistic home.
This year’s recipients were chosen by a panel of 23 festival programmers and independent judges from a field of applicants from throughout Connecticut, based on artistic merit, originality, innovation, and cultural or social relevance. Artists must use the grant to create or complete new, original work and premiere it at the 2025 festival.