Playwright and City College of New York librarian Seamus Scanlon is the recipient of a $5,000 City Artist Corps grant for NYC-based working artists disproportionately impacted by COVID-19. The program is presented by The New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs (DCLA), with support from the Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment (MOME) and Queens Theatre.
Scanlon was recognized for his award-winning play “The Long Wet Grass.” He will arrange a bilingual reading – in English and Spanish – of the play. Actors Gina Costigan and Tim Ruddy will read in English, while Laura Spalding and Fabián González will read in Spanish. The Spanish version of the play was translated by Mónica Flores Correa and Cristóbal Williams.
“The Long Wet Grass” is the second act in Scanlon's larger trilogy of plays entitled “The McGowan Trilogy” which chronicles the odyssey of fictional assassin Victor McGowan and his adversaries in Northern Ireland amidst the Troubles. It premiered in 2014 at The Cell Theatre Company in Chelsea and has been on tour around New York, in the United Kingdom, Ireland and Japan.
Based at the Center for Worker Education Library at City College Downtown, Scanlon is a Carnegie Corporation award-winning librarian. Click here for his other works.
A native of Galway, Ireland, Scanlon is one of 500 grant recipients this year. Over the course of three award cycles, more than 3,000 artists received the $5,000 awards to engage the public with artist activities across New York City’s five boroughs this summer and fall. Artists use the grant to create new work or phase of a work, or restage preexisting creative activities across any discipline.
Members of the public can participate in City Artist Corps Grants programming by following the hashtag #CityArtistCorps on social media.
City Artist Corps Grants were launched in June 2021 by NYFA and DCLA with support from the Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment and the Queens Theatre. The program is funded by the $25 million New York City Artist Corps recovery initiative announced by Mayor de Blasio and DCLA earlier this year. Please visit NYFA’s web site for more details.
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