Sibyl Kempson—who collaborated with Elevator Repair Service on this week’s preview performances of Fondly, Collette Richland—has been awarded the 2013–14 McKnight National Residency and Commission from Minneapolis’ Playwright Center.

New recipients of the Doris Duke Artist Awards have been named. Among them are artists who have shared our stage (or will), including Ping Chong, Myra Melford, Tere O’Connor, Pavol Liska, Kelly Copper, David Lang, Elizabeth Streb, Rudresh Mahanthappa, and others.

In the “sweetly subversive” Untitled Feminist Show—a Walker commission now being performed at Seattle’s On the Boards—Young Jean Lee “grabs cliches, wrestles them into submission, then makes them tell jokes,” writes critic Brendan Kiley.

Hailed in NYC, Ganesh Versus the Third Reich tells of the Hindu deity’s trip to reclaim the Sanskrit symbol of the swastika from the Nazis. Performed by actors with “intellectual disabilities,” it “never lets you settle into passive acceptance of anything it does.”

In an interview with Eric Dyer, theater collective Rude Mechs discusses onstage sex in Dionysus in 69, their collaboration with Radiohole (who performed at Out There 2010), and the autobiographical nature of The Method Gun (which launches Out There 25 Jan. 10-12).

The Guardian’s list of 2012’s top performances has Back to Back Theatre’s Ganesh versus the Third Reich—part of next month’s Out There festival—at no. 7, dubbing it “the most challenging and subversive” piece at the London International Festival of Theatre.

Frederick Neumann, an actor and mainstay of the experimental theater company Mabou Mines, passed away in late November at 86. The company has visited the Walker many times, including in 2005, for its presentation of DollHouse.

Co-commissioned by the Walker, Elevator Repair Service’s 6-1/2 hour GATZ opens a nine-show run in LA Wednesday night. Dubbing the text indispensable, ERS decided to read every word of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby—aloud and on-stage.

“Part of the rap against activists is they’re railing against something,” says Marc Bamuthi Joesph, whose Walker-co-commission red, black & GREEN: a blues opens at BAM this week. “I want to make something. I want to make the world I want to see. It’s not just pretty art.”