Manbites Dog Theater, a professional non-profit theater company founded in Durham in October 1987, serves the Triangle area of central North Carolina. Manbites Dog’s purpose is to foster, promote, and increase public knowledge and appreciation of theater by producing and sponsoring live theater performance and conducting other activities to encourage public interest in and discussion of theater, including making grants to further such purposes.
In March 1997, after ten years as a semi-vagabond theater company, Manbites Dog purchased a 6,500 square foot building on Foster Street near downtown Durham to serve as a permanent home space for the company. The building opened to the public in fall 1998 where it continued until 2018, when the building was sold and the company transitioned to being a support organization for Triangle-area theater artists and companies.
Over its 31 season history Manbites Dog mounted more than 150 productions, many of them regional or state premieres, as well as hosting a broad range of local and national guest artists and companies in the Other Voices series. Hundreds of local artists worked at Manbites Dog over the years, performing in shows that drew enthusiastic and loyal audiences.
Manbites Dog’s original productions over the years included Indecent Materials, Hotline, Walking Miracles, A Tune for Tommy, Plays Well With Others, Bucknaked: a love story, Caleb Calypso and the Midnight Marauders, Nightwork, Now You See Me, and The Miraculous and the Mundane.
In May of 2019, one year after the sale of its building, Manbites Dog announced it would be accepting project grant proposals for Triangle theater productions for the 2019-2020 season. In August 2019, 24 grant applicants received awards totaling $37,150 from Manbites Dog’s Theater Fund.
Since the onset of the COVID pandemic in March 2020, Manbites Dog has helped support emergency Triangle grass-roots artist relief funds, honored theater artists whose work reflected the legacy of Durham social justice activist Ann Atwater, and awarded sustaining grants to artists whose ongoing initiatives strengthen the theater community.
In the spring of 2022, Manbites Dog announced resumption of theater project grants, and will begin taking applications for the 2022-23 season in mid-June.
Find out more about previous and current grants.
STAFF
Jeff Storer, Artistic Director
Edward Hunt, Managing Director, Associate Artistic Director
BOARD OF DIRECTORS
E’Vonne Coleman
Michael Hayes, President
Edward Hunt, Treasurer
Jeff Storer, Vice President
Monique Velasquez