Mission:

Miami Made aims to create and expand opportunities for artists living and working in our community by commissioning and developing new works for presentation at the Arsht Center.

History:

Miami Made has been nurturing local Miami artists of all genres since 2005. The festival vision and mission is wide in scope, and includes commissioning, developing, educating, work-shopping, and presenting new work. Over the past five years, works in all disciplines of the performing arts have been selected for various stages of development. While all were reflective of the vibrant and extraordinarily imaginative arts scene that informs South Florida, several works have since been developed into full pieces. Cabaret Unkempt premiered at the Arsht Center during its inaugural 2006-2007 season. Refugee, Flock, and Miami Libre were presented during the 2007-2008 season. During the 2008-2009 season, and the Arsht Center hosted the premiere of 1,000 Homosexuals and provided funding for Rosie Herrera’s Various Stages of Drowning, which waspresented at the American Dance Festival in North Carolina in 2009. The 2008-2009 season also included the workshopping of a work-in-progress by Desmond Child, Cuba Libre, and the showcase presentation of three new multi-media works-in-progress, Hilo; Good, God, Go; and Model City. Following the success of Ms. Herrera’s first Miami Made installment, the Center was pleased to partner with American Dance Festival to commission a second work, Dining Alone, which will premiere in July 2010 at the American Dance Festival. In 2010, the Center also commissioned two new original plays by Miami playwright, Michael McKeever. The Arsht Center’s commitment to new work extends beyond the Miami community. Camp Kappawanna, a new musical by Lisa Loeb and Marco Ramirez is currently in development with support from the Arsht Center. Additionally, the Center is providing artistic guidance for a major theatrical production, The Aluminum Show, which will premiere in the Ziff Ballet Opera House. Rock Odyssey, a children’s educational full-scale musical piece inspired by Homer’s Odyssey, will also premiere in the Knight Concert Hall in the spring of 2010, when over 25,000 fifth graders from Miami-Dade County come to the Center to see this production for free.

Program Guidelines:

• Miami Made projects may be in any area of the performing arts, including music, dance, theater and mixed media. Preference will be given to those that seek to extend the boundaries of current artistic practice. This is not a grant program or a competition. Consideration will be given to new projects which have not been produced our presented before. The Center seeks to award funding toward the initial development stages of the piece.
• Miami Made projects may be of any scale and suitable for presentation indoors or outdoors. In developing their concepts, however, artists should take into account the range of venues and spaces at Arsht Center. Theater details are available at: www.arshtcenter.org/tech. These works will be presented within the scope of Miami Made Weekend, taking place in March, 2011 in either the Incubator or the Outloud programs. The Incubator program will showcase works in various stages of progress in the Carnival Studio Theater. Outloud will feature one or more readings of new, unproduced plays.
• Professional development opportunities are available and recommended for interested applicants. Writing and presentation seminars will be open for artists who wish to enhance their literary skills and performance proposals.  
• The Arsht Center will select a small number of projects for further discussion. The Arsht Center will give consideration to supporting the further creative development of these selected proposals. This will result in a second round, where more fully developed concepts may be presented in person by the artist to the Arsht Center. After that, a final selection of projects will be made and commissions awarded. See timeline for details.
• Projects selected and funded by the Miami Made program may be subject to future rights and subsidy requirements by the Arsht Center as determined on a case by case basis.

Proposal Guidelines:

Expressions of Interest/Proposals should include the following:

1. A typed treatment of the project. This may be as brief as the artist wishes, but should not exceed two (2) standard pages.
2. A biography or resume of the artist of no more than one (1) standard page.
3. One piece of support material. This may be a CD, DVD or portfolio, but should be material that best represents the artist or the project. No VHS tapes will be accepted.
4. Please be sure to include name, address, tel/email/website, social security or tax ID number.

Questions can be directed the following number: 786-468-2094.

Expressions of interest must be received in writing no later than Friday June 4, 2010, at 5 p.m. and sent to the following address:

         Hollie Altman
         Arsht Center for the Performing Arts
         1300 Biscayne Boulevard
         Miami, FL 33132
        
We regret we cannot accept proposals sent electronically. After the deadline, phone inquiries will not be accepted. An Arsht Center representative will contact applicants once materials are reviewed.  Please do not send originals. Proposals and support materials will not be returned.

Timeline:

• Saturday, March 6: Call for applicants goes out

• Spring writing and presentations workshops: Dates TBA

• Friday, June 4: Proposals due to Arsht Center

• Early July: Notification of 2nd round of evaluations

• Late-July, Dates TBD: Think tank sessions with 2nd round participants

• September/October: “Show and Tell” presentations of 2nd round projects with Miami Made Panelists

• Late-Fall 2010: Commissioning Announcements

• Winter 2010-2011: Individual coaching sessions for commissioned artists

• March 2011: Work presented during the Miami Made Weekend

 Miami Made Projects

Cabaret Unkempt
Cabaret Unkempt was an irreverent and satirical memory piece performed by Jennylin Duany and Elizabeth Doud, which used projected media, music, and poetry to explore the Miami-based writer and performer Jennylin Duany's Cuban American background, her body, her self-image and her moving, often hilarious, experiences as a performer of "size" in a culture where size definitely matters. With the slick juxtaposition of her counterpart and collaborator, Elizabeth Doud, the work offered audiences a voyeur's pleasure of looking into a world that is sensual and audacious. Cabaret Unkempt used satire and physicality to explore moments when all of us, regardless of size, are confronted with letting go of the identification with our body-trappings, and are faced with our deepest insecurities. "In this piece I pay homage to the 'excess' parts of me that have been there for such a longtime." The performers ruminated on the bombastic expectations of control, body mass, plastic surgery and self acceptance in a world obsessed with body image. The work surveyed the landscape of "unkempt women," her super-ego, and created a cartography of her body's journey. This performance played beautifully to an intimate theater space, and engaged audiences through humor, visceral provocation and a sense of humanity. Premiered in the Carnival Studio Theater in December of 2006.

Refugee
Marc Joseph’s work is a Haitian-and-hip-hop flavored play with song-and dance interludes, about fleeing home in search of freedom and adapting to a strange new land called Miami. Refugee is a stirring tale—at once terrifying and bleak, but full of hope, inspiration, and triumph. Ludovic, a singer of protest songs, escapes the political oppression of his native Haiti, only to find indifference, confusion, hostility and loneliness on U.S. shores. It’s a personal story that Joseph himself has lived, but one that millions of Americans can call their own. Premiered in the Carnival Studio Theater in November of 2007.

Flock
Flock was commissioned by the Arsht Center as part of its Miami Made program and is a ninety-minute performance for saxophone quartet and audience participation. During the performance, the four musicians and 60-80 audience members move freely around the performance space. Wireless networking hardware and software determine their relative locations and use that data to generate performance instructions for the musicians, who view them on wireless handheld displays on their instruments. Real-time video animation artistically renders the data on video monitors scattered throughout the performance space to give a visual experience of the score. Premiered in the Carnival Studio Theater in December of 2007.

1000 Homosexuals as described by Michael Yawney, playwright.
1,000 Homosexuals is a comedy commissioned by the Arsht Center’s Miami Made program about Anita Bryant’s 1977 battle against gay rights from her own perspective. In other words, she is a Joan of Arc fighting against a perverse and powerful cabal seeking to seduce innocent children. Much of the text is taken from government records, public media, and underground gay manifestos of the time. (Could I ever write a line like “Love is America’s greatest under-tapped natural resource?” I did not have to—it was in the transcript of the county commissioners’ debate on gay rights.) I wanted to write a play that would cause people to question their beliefs about gay people, sex, religion and childhood. I wanted to write a play that would show how different the 70’s were from today and show how today’s world grew out of that time. Premiered in the Carnival Studio Theater in November of 2008.

Miami Libre
Knight Concert Hall was transformed into the city’s most popular club over the summer of 2008 and featured Miami’s own sizzling timba band, Tiempo Libre and the hottest dancers north of Havana. It was a sexy, new dance extravaganza: the story of a musician’s search for love and liberty, a tale of two cities united by the spirit of one people, and a celebration of Cuban music and the millions who carry it in their hearts, no matter where they go or where they call home. Premiered in the Knight Concert Hall in July of 2008.

Cuba Libre
In September of 2009, a new, full-length musical by famed songwriter Desmond Child, Cuba Libre, was work shopped at the Arsht Center

Dining Alone
Dining Alone by Rosie Herrera was commissioned by the American Dance Festival and the Adrienne Arsht Center; it will premiere in July 2010 at the American Dance Festival in North Carolina.