Images from this year's grant recipients.
Tisch Drama is proud to extend its congratulations to three Drama students who were announced as the 2025 Community Engaged Summer Grant awardees: Tess Rowan Jannery-Barney, Nathalia Nicolalde, and Isabella Molinary Sandoval.
The Community Engaged Summer Grant is for Drama students seeking financial assistance to complete a community-engaged theatre project during summer 2025 (June–August). Their project allows awardees to address issues affecting a particular community and includes meaningful participation from those community members, with an evaluation of the project’s impact.
Grant awardee Tess Rowan Jannery-Barney’s Field Notes: A Long Trail Odyssey is one of three projects selected from this year’s grant submissions. As a second-year student studying Drama at the New Studio on Broadway, and writer of Static, a Morse code musical about the Appalachian Trail, Jannery-Barney aims to collaborate with The Green Mountain Club in Vermont to create a documentary audio theatre piece about the importance of preserving natural resources along the Long Trail, a 272-mile hiking trail that stretches from Massachusetts to the Canadian border, following the Green Mountain range.
“Through a series of interviews, narration, and immersive soundscapes, I want to tell the stories of the hikers, volunteers, trail maintainers, and local communities that have uplifted the Long Trail for over a century,” Jannery-Barney said. “Many people are unaware of the Long Trail’s ecosystem and rich history of outdoor recreation, nature preservation, and wildlife protection. Hopefully, this project can highlight the importance of preserving natural landscapes on the Long Trail and beyond.”
A second grant recipient, rising fourth-year student and folk singer-songwriter, Nathalia Nicolalde, will mount Amplify: A Devised Performance Piece With Los Angeles Youth. The project is a collaboration with students in the Harmony Project’s Summer Music Program and will create and perform a music theatre ensemble piece that blends students’ community music with contemporary sounds and student-generated storytelling.
When speaking on the project, Nicolalde said, “Over the summer, we will engage in weekly workshops that explore different music genres—such as Cumbia, Andean folk, and Merengue—while incorporating elements of acting, songwriting, and collaborative scene creation.”
Lastly, Isabella Molinary Sandoval’s Preserving Taíno Traditions will be a collaboration with Artisferio and the Loisaida Center to host a day-long outdoor event in a community garden on New York City’s Lower East Side. The event will feature Indigenous-led organizations–potentially including drumming, dance, storytelling, and ceremonial practices–a panel discussion with knowledge keepers, and a collaborative art-making activity centered on ancestral memory.
Sandoval, who is a Puerto Rican actor, poet, and the Co-founder of the multi-disciplinary art collective Artisferio, said, “We hope to recruit participation from Garifuna Dance Company, Golden Drum Organization, Taino elder Manuel Rufino, and members of the Kiwari Taino Itai (songkeepers and drum makers).”
Tisch Drama offers congratulations and best wishes to awardees Tess Rowan Jannery-Barney, Nathalia Nicolalde, and Isabella Molinary Sandoval.