Yuval Sharon (center) is founder and artistic director of The Industry, a Los Angeles-based production company that produces operas in nontraditional spaces and formats. He was among 23 named Wednesday to receive a “genius grant” from the Chicago-based MacArthur Foundation. (John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation via AP)

Yuval Sharon (center) is founder and artistic director of The Industry, a Los Angeles-based production company that produces operas in nontraditional spaces and formats. He was among 23 named Wednesday to receive a “genius grant” from the Chicago-based MacArthur Foundation. (John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation via AP)

24 receive ‘genius grants’ from MacArthur Foundation

They include a director who has taken opera to the streets and a photographer of immigrants.

  • By SARA BURNETT Associated Press
  • Wednesday, October 11, 2017 7:05am
  • Nation-World

By Sara Burnett / Associated Press

CHICAGO — A director who has taken opera from the concert hall to the streets of Los Angeles and an organizer who helped put a human face on the plight of young undocumented immigrants are among this year’s MacArthur fellows and recipients of the so-called genius grants.

The Chicago-based John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation on Wednesday announced the 24 fellows, who each receive $625,000 over five years to spend any way they choose. The recipients work in a variety of fields, from computer science to theater, immunology and photography.

The foundation has awarded the fellowships annually since 1981 to people who show “exceptional creativity in their work and the prospect for still more in the future.” Previous winners include “Hamilton” playwright Lin-Manuel Miranda and author-journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates.

There is no application process. Instead, an anonymous pool of nominators brings potential fellows to the foundation’s attention. Those selected learn they’ve been chosen shortly before the awards are announced.

For opera director and producer Yuval Sharon, the news that he had been selected was “an enormous shock and honor.” When the foundation called, he assumed they were seeking a referral for someone else who’d been nominated.

“I’m totally amazed,” said Sharon, 37, the founder and artistic director of The Industry, a Los Angeles-based production company that produces operas in nontraditional spaces and formats.

A 2015 production transported audience members and performers to various locations in Los Angeles via limousines, with singers and musicians performing along the way and at each stop.

His next work, an adaptation of the radio program “War of the Worlds” will utilize decommissioned World War II sirens to broadcast the performance occurring inside the theater onto the streets. The sounds of performers stationed outdoors — and likely the traffic and other street noise — will then be transmitted back into the concert hall.

Sharon said he comes across many people who don’t think opera is for them, but he hopes hearing about these kinds of “audacious experiments” will peak their interest.

Another fellow, Cristina Jiménez Moreta, is co-founder and executive director of United We Dream, a national network of groups led by immigrant youth.

Moreta, 33, and her parents came to the U.S. illegally from Ecuador when she was a child. At 19, she revealed her undocumented status publicly. It was a move that put her and her family at risk of deportation, but also placed her at the forefront of a movement to change the way immigrants are perceived.

She was instrumental in pressing for the 2012 adoption of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, the now-endangered executive order that allowed thousands of undocumented young people to live without fear of deportation.

Moreta said the fellowship is recognition of the resilience shown by her parents and other immigrants who “had the courage to stand up and say ‘we are here, this is our home and we are fighting.’”

The first people she told were her parents, who were fearful when she started organizing but now join her in marches and to pass petitions.

“They’re very proud,” she said.

Also selected was Dawoud Bey, a photographer and educator from Chicago whose portraits often feature people from marginalized communities. For “The Birmingham Project,” he commemorated the 1963 bombing at a church in Birmingham, Alabama, that killed six children, with a series of portraits of Birmingham residents who were the age of each of the children killed and the age they would be if they had lived.

Others announced Wednesday were writer and cultural critic Viet Thanh Nguyen — whose novel, “The Sympathizer,” about a communist double agent, won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for fiction — and Derek Peterson, a historian of East Africa and professor at the University of Michigan.

Talk to us

> Give us your news tips.

> Send us a letter to the editor.

> More Herald contact information.

More in Nation-World

FILE - Britain's Queen Elizabeth II looks on during a visit to officially open the new building at Thames Hospice, Maidenhead, England July 15, 2022. Buckingham Palace says Queen Elizabeth II is under medical supervision as doctors are “concerned for Her Majesty’s health.” The announcement comes a day after the 96-year-old monarch canceled a meeting of her Privy Council and was told to rest. (Kirsty O'Connor/Pool Photo via AP, File)
Queen Elizabeth II dead at 96 after 70 years on the throne

Britain’s longest-reigning monarch and a rock of stability across much of a turbulent century died Thursday.

A woman reacts as she prepares to leave an area for relatives of the passengers aboard China Eastern's flight MU5735 at the Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport, Tuesday, March 22, 2022, in Guangzhou. No survivors have been found as rescuers on Tuesday searched the scattered wreckage of a China Eastern plane carrying 132 people that crashed a day earlier on a wooded mountainside in China's worst air disaster in more than a decade. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)
No survivors found in crash of Boeing 737 in China

What caused the plane to drop out of the sky shortly before it was to being its descent remained a mystery.

In this photo taken by mobile phone released by Xinhua News Agency, a piece of wreckage of the China Eastern's flight MU5735 are seen after it crashed on the mountain in Tengxian County, south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region on Monday, March 21, 2022. A China Eastern Boeing 737-800 with 132 people on board crashed in a remote mountainous area of southern China on Monday, officials said, setting off a forest fire visible from space in the country's worst air disaster in nearly a decade. (Xinhua via AP)
Boeing 737 crashes in southern China with 132 aboard

More than 15 hours after communication was lost with the plane, there was still no word of survivors.

Former Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., center, arrives at the U.S. Capitol in Washington D.C. with Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, right, the vice president-elect, on Wednesday morning. Gaetz withdrew from consideration Thursday, saying he was an unfair distraction to the transition. (Haiyun Jiang / The New York Times)
Matt Gaetz withdraws from consideration as attorney general

“It is clear that my confirmation was unfairly becoming a distraction,” Gaetz wrote Thursday on X.

Attendees react after Fox News called the presidential race for Former President Donald Trump, during an election night event at the Palm Beach County Convention Center in West Palm Beach, Fla., on Wednesday. Trump made gains in every corner of the country and with nearly every demographic group. (Haiyun Jiang / The New York Times)
Donald Trump returns to power, ushering in new era of uncertainty

Despite criminal convictions and fears of authoritarianism, Trump rode frustrations over the economy and immigration.

Voters cast their ballots at a polling place inside the Weisman Art Museum at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis on Election Day, Tuesday, Nov. 5 2024. Voters headed into polling stations on Tuesday in the closing hours of a presidential contest that both major parties said would take the country in dramatically different directions, capping a contentious and exhausting 107-day sprint that began when President Joe Biden abandoned his bid for a second term.  (Caroline Yang/The New York Times)
Live updates: Georgia called for Trump

The Daily Herald will be providing live updates on national election developments throughout Tuesday.

Liam Payne performs during the Jingle Ball at Madison Square Garden in New York in 2017. Payne, who rose to fame as a singer and songwriter for the British group One Direction, one of the best-selling boy bands of all time, died after falling from the third floor of a hotel in Buenos Aires on Wednesday. He was 31. (Chad Batka / The New York Times)
Liam Payne, 31, former One Direction singer, dies in fall in Argentina

Payne rose to fame as a member of one of the bestselling boy bands of all time before embarking upon a solo career.

In this photo taken from video provided by the Ukrainian Presidential Press Office, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy speaks to the nation in Kyiv, Ukraine, Sunday, Feb. 27, 2022. Street fighting broke out in Ukraine's second-largest city Sunday and Russian troops put increasing pressure on strategic ports in the country's south following a wave of attacks on airfields and fuel facilities elsewhere that appeared to mark a new phase of Russia's invasion. (Ukrainian Presidential Press Office via AP)
Ukraine wants EU membership, but accession often takes years

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s request has enthusiastic support from several member states.

FILE - Ukrainian servicemen walk by fragments of a downed aircraft,  in in Kyiv, Ukraine, Friday, Feb. 25, 2022. The International Criminal Court's prosecutor has put combatants and their commanders on notice that he is monitoring Russia's invasion of Ukraine and has jurisdiction to prosecute war crimes and crimes against humanity. But, at the same time, Prosecutor Karim Khan acknowledges that he cannot investigate the crime of aggression. (AP Photo/Oleksandr Ratushniak, File)
ICC prosecutor to open probe into war crimes in Ukraine

U.N. human rights chief Michelle Bachelet confirmed that 102 civilians have been killed.

FILE - Refugees fleeing conflict from neighboring Ukraine arrive to Zahony, Hungary, Sunday, Feb. 27, 2022. As hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians seek refuge in neighboring countries, cradling children in one arm and clutching belongings in the other, leaders in Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, Moldova and Romania are offering a hearty welcome. (AP Photo/Anna Szilagyi, File)
Europe welcomes Ukrainian refugees — others, less so

It is a stark difference from treatment given to migrants and refugees from the Middle East and Africa.

Afghan evacuees disembark the plane and board a bus after landing at Skopje International Airport, North Macedonia, on Wednesday, Sept. 15, 2021. North Macedonia has hosted another group of 44 Afghan evacuees on Wednesday where they will be sheltered temporarily till their transfer to final destinations. (AP Photo/Boris Grdanoski)
‘They are safe here.’ Snohomish County welcomes hundreds of Afghans

The county’s welcoming center has been a hub of services and assistance for migrants fleeing Afghanistan since October.

FILE - In this April 15, 2019, file photo, a vendor makes change for a marijuana customer at a cannabis marketplace in Los Angeles. An unwelcome trend is emerging in California, as the nation's most populous state enters its fifth year of broad legal marijuana sales. Industry experts say a growing number of license holders are secretly operating in the illegal market — working both sides of the economy to make ends meet. (AP Photo/Richard Vogel, File)
In California pot market, a hazy line between legal and not

Industry insiders say the practice of working simultaneously in the legal and illicit markets is a financial reality.

Support local journalism

If you value local news, make a gift now to support the trusted journalism you get in The Daily Herald. Donations processed in this system are not tax deductible.