Opera director, activist among grant recipients

Foundation presents annual fellowships

CHICAGO — A director who has taken opera from the concert hall to the streets of Los Angeles and an organizer who helped put a 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 several 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.”

There is no application process. Instead, an anonymous pool of nominators brings potential fellows to the foundation’s attention. Those selected learn they have 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 had 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.

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 United States 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 executive order that allowed thousands of undocumented young people to live without fear of deportation.