Two recent Lewis Center for the Arts alumni from Princeton’s Class of 2024, Juliette Carbonnier and Collin Riggins, are the recipients of the Martin A. Dale ’53 Fellowship, which funds yearlong independent projects for members of each senior class in the year following their graduation. The two alumni began their work this summer.

The Dale Fellowship, created by 1953 Princeton alumnus Martin Dale, provides a $40,000 grant to spend a year on “an independent project of extraordinary merit that will widen the recipient’s experience of the world and significantly enhance the student’s personal growth and intellectual development.”

Photo courtesy Juliette Carbonnier

For her Dale project, Carbonnier is writing a one-woman play with music inspired by the legacy of her ancestors, some of whom were progressive Yiddish performers, comedians and composers, while others were Holocaust survivors. She will use tropes and traditions of Yiddish theater — including comedic shtick and songs written by her family members — as inspirations, she notes, as she discovers what it means to “find home in story and song.”

Carbonnier pursued certificates in creative writing, music theater and theater at the Lewis Center. For her English thesis at Princeton and her independent creative work in the Program in Theater & Music Theater, Carbonnier wrote, co-produced, co-designed and performed in Bodywork, a dark comedy about a young woman with chronic pain who becomes eligible for a new body-swapping surgery. Through the Program in Creative Writing, she also wrote a collection of poetry entitled “Funeral Theatrics.”

Photo courtesy Collin Riggins

For his Dale project, “Cotton Stains,” Riggins is producing a collection of black-and-white analog photographs of Black cotton farmers with the aim to “celebrate cotton culture through the camera,” he notes. Riggins is also working to develop a public art studio in Garysburg, North Carolina, to create arts infrastructure in that area by providing young artists with creative programming and opportunities.

A film photographer and conceptual artist, Riggins earned a certificate from the Program in Visual Arts and a degree in African American studies at Princeton.

Read the full story by Rebekah Schroeder through Princeton University news.

Banner image: Juliette Carbonnier (left) participates in the final dress rehearsal of her play, Bodywork, in the Wallace Theater on Nov. 2, 2023. Photo by James DeSalvo