The Kennedy Center Fund for New American Plays has announced grants to theatre companies and playwrights in support of productions of new works.

The grant recipients for 2000 are Pork Pie — A Mythic Jazz Fable, awarding $43,000 to the Denver Center Theatre Company and $10,000 to playwright Michael Genet; The Dinosaur Within, awarding $30,000 to Austin's State Theatre Company and $10,000 to playwright John Walch; and Waving Goodbye, awarding $20,000 to Chicago's Naked Eye Theatre and $10,000 to playwright Jamie Pachino.

Now in its 14th year, the Kennedy Center Fund for New American Plays is a project of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts with support from Countrywide Home Loans Inc. in cooperation with the President's Committee on the Arts and the Humanities.

Grants totaling $3.8 million have previously been awarded to 114 playwrights and 55 not-for-profit theatres across the country, enabling them to mount premieres of 80 new plays.

  Past recipients include Pulitzer Prize winners Tony Kushner for Angels in America, Robert Schenkkan for The Kentucky Cycle and Wendy Wasserstein for The Heidi Chronicles. — By Kenneth Jones