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Composer RUSSELL PLATT will undertake two months of concentrated composition time at two artists' colonies, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and Yaddo, this summer. The residencies will feed into his production plans for the 1995-96 season.

A grant was awarded to NATALIA ALMADA for a documentary entitled El General. Dictator, iron-man, nun-burner, father of modern Mexico, Natalia Almada's great-grandfather, Plutarco Elias Calles was the president of Mexico from 1924 to 1928. El General is a feature-length film about the conflicting history Almada inherited as the great-granddaughter of one of Mexico's most controversial figures and the socio-economic injustice that has prevailed from the Revolution of 1910 to the present. El General is a journey into the past of Almada's family and an intimate portrait of Mexico then and now.

Jo Andres received support for That's It (TO JE TO), an experimental film based on the 1992 journals and drawings of Bosnian visual artist Izeta Gradevic. Gradevic, along with her husband and friends from the Obala Art Centar, was forced to take shelter in the basement theater of the Drama Academy to survive the siege of her hometown, Sarajevo. The film will focus on the woman's interior landscape-her hopes, fears, dreams-interwoven with daily acts of existence. Dreamlike, spectral and mysterious, Andres' work has a distinctive, nonlinear shape that appeals both to the conscious and the subconscious.

THE CHILDRENS THEATRE COMPANY, Minneapolis, Minnesota, received a grant of $30,000 in support of Playground, a new-play development program for emerging playwrights. As one of the largest professional theater companies for young people, The Childrens Theatre sets a standard for excellence. It collaborates with New Dramatists, New York City, a national playwrights membership and service organization, on Playground, which introduces playwrights to the challenging world of theater for young people by creating process oriented frameworks for venturing into new territory. Three emerging playwrights will be selected to work with a collaborative partner of their choice to develop new plays. There will be a ten-day Lab at the Childrens Theatre where the playwrights will have access to a full range of developmental resources. The plays will then be presented in staged readings in Minneapolis and New York City.

THE PLAYWRIGHTS' CENTER, Minneapolis, Minnesota, is in the midst of a capital campaign to renovate its building, including a 120-seat theater, lobby area, rehearsal hall, playwright work areas and improved office space. The Jerome Foundation does not make grants to capital campaigns, but it has developed an interest in projects that provide opportunities for individual artists to create and install their works as part of the renovation, construction and enhancement of a nonprofit arts facility. The Playwrights' Center identified three areas within the capital campaign for artists' projects: an exterior sign and rail, a lobby mural and the entrance tower. FORECAST will manage the application and selection process. Jerome Foundation made a commitment of $35,000 to the Center for one or more projects.

Author LINDA LIGHTSEY RICE received funding to travel to Cork, Ireland, to do research for her novel Thistle Man which takes place during World War II. Rice will interview Irish citizens about the countrys neutrality during 1944 and 1945.

SABRINA CHAPADJIEU, composer and songwriter, Brooklyn, New York, will travel to London, Paris, and Berlin, to study neo-burlesque to inspire her composition and performance style in this form. She is interested in exploring the different geographic influences, such as the of Londons theartical politics, Berlins Weimar era cabarets, and Paris new wave of feminist burlesque, to create a new series of songs.