Sweet Auburn: The Magazine of the Friends of Mount Auburn Connecting the Present with the Past | Page 20

people & happenings GRANT NEWS By Jenny Gilbert Director of Institutional Advancement T he Friends of Mount Auburn Cemetery (FOMAC) received a $3,000 grant from Mass Humanities to support moderated conversations following The Mount Auburn Plays in June and September, a series of one-act plays written by Patrick Gabridge as part of his two-year artist residency at the Cemetery. The grant will support two humanities scholars, Dr. Myra Glenn and Laura Kathrein, who will work with Gabridge to craft discussion points to help audience members consider the context of the plays and their presentation on the unique stage of a historic cemetery. Gabridge’s plays will mark, preserve, sometimes celebrate, and sometimes grieve our history and culture, and the post-performance conversations will help us achieve our goal of creating a shared space for dialogue, understanding, and reflection, making a more meaningful audience experience. FOMAC also received a $1,500 grant from the Bob Jolly Charitable Trust to support The Mount Auburn Plays. Bob Conway Jolly was a renowned Boston actor and Freedom Trail Player who is buried at Mount Auburn. The Trust makes small grants to individuals and organizations that are part of the Greater Boston theater community. 18 FOMAC also received an $80,000 grant from the A.J. & M.D. Ruggiero Memorial Trust and a $4,500 grant from the Hollis Declan Leverett Memorial Fund to support a new phase of a habitat restoration project at Consecration Dell—the North Dell Meadows. This will provide a critical new expansion to the habitat we have been restoring in the heart of the Cemetery for more than twenty years. General Operating Support Grants: Roy A. Hunt Foundation Landry Family Foundation Massachusetts Cultural Council A.J. & M.D. Ruggiero Memorial Trust Edwin S. Webster Foundation