I Wasn’t Planning On Saying Anything

media release: Shake Rag Alley Center for the Arts, which celebrates its 20th birthday in 2024, is pleased to announce the year’s lineup of artists in residence selected for the Scherbarth Residency Program: historical fiction author Hilda Demuth-Lutze, playwright Nina Kissinger, and watercolor artist Janet Vetter. The Scherbarth Residency is competitively awarded to artists and makers in the visual, performing, and literary arts who seek to share their work in a public forum and contribute stewardship hours to the Shake Rag Alley campus while working on a project. Shake Rag Alley provides lodging, studio space, and opportunities to connect with Shake Rag Alley’s creative community. 

This year’s cohort begins their residence in late February and early March as they work on their projects, explore the creative ecosystem of Mineral Point and the rural Driftless Area of southwestern Wisconsin, and share their work with one another and the public. Through the generosity of the late Jim Scherbarth who endowed the program, artists and makers will have access to the time and space needed to work and create, as well as to the nurturing environment of Mineral Point and the chance to interact with its network of resident artists. While living on the unique campus of historic and reproduction buildings, Scherbarth residents contribute in meaningful ways to the mission of Shake Rag Alley. Meanwhile, members of the public benefit from the special access they have to the artists through public events, with opportunities to interact and to gain inspiration from the artists’ experience and process. This year’s residents will offer a fascinating diversity of community programming in conjunction with their residencies, which include:

Nina Kissinger | Tuesday, March 5: Playwright Nina Kissinger offers a table read and workshop of her play-in-progress I Wasn’t Planning On Saying Anything at 6 p.m. at the Lind Pavilion (411 Commerce Street, Mineral Point) featuring local actors. Nina Kissinger is a playwright originally from San Francisco and currently based in Brooklyn. Her short play The Exit Interview was a winner of Vertigo Production’s 2022 10-Minute Play Festival, the Over Our Head Players’ 2023 Snowdance 10-Minute Comedy Festival, and the South Street Players’ 13th-Annual Tri-State Theatre Festival. Her full-length work, This Is Government, was a winner of the 2022 Agnes Nixon Playwriting Festival, a Semi-Finalist for the 2023 O’Neill National Playwrights Conference, the 2023 Ashland New Plays Festival, and the 2023 Morgan-Wixson Theatre New Works Festival, and received readings as a part of the Shake Rag Alley Center for the Arts’ 2023 Alley Stage Reading Series and the 2023 National High School Institute’s Theatre Arts Division Reading Series at Northwestern University. She is a graduate of Northwestern University, where she studied playwriting under Laura Schellhardt and Julie Marie Myatt.