The Manhattan Theatre Club (MTC), one of the nation's finest and most successful nonprofit theater companies, having received four of the last eight Pulitzer Prizes awarded in Drama, requests a renewal grant of $500,000 over the next three years to build on and expand the Sloan program. The centerpiece of this effort is four annual playwright commissions, three to mid?level or established playwrights and one to an emerging playwright. Sloan's collaboration with MTC is increasingly attracting leading playwrights and the resulting work is playing at theaters across the country. Since Proof in 2000 and Humble Boy in 2003-both MTC plays were supported by Sloan after others had developed them-six new plays commissioned by Sloan have gone on to be staged at major theaters across the country, including Fake currently at the Steppenwolf in Chicago and Intelligence Slave now at the Alley Theater in Houston. The Foundation has supported this work at the Manhattan Theatre Club since 2000 with grants totaling $1,180,000.

As part of our exploration of whether to expand our support for research and public understanding of energy issues, we invited the Council on Foreign Relations to request funding for a workshop on energy security related to oil and gas. The workshop will have three important features: It will go beyond the platitudes and misconceptions that often dominate discussions of this subject. It will result in a well considered research agenda for this field that could guide our grantmaking if we decide to pursue the subject further. It will make a special effort to involve young scholars and policy analysts (meaning those under 40) from a diverse set of academic and professional backgrounds as a modest first step in ensuring that new, fresh blood is brought into the field. We believe that this workshop will be very useful and serve as an excellent foundation to help us decide what, if anything, we wish to do further in this field.