An actor and stage manager turned Episcopal monk, who pledged last year to give away much of his $153 million Powerball jackpot to support the performing arts, has made his first grant to a theatrical production as improbable as his own story.
The Goodman Theatre in Chicago announced last week that its 2015-16 season would include a five-hour adaptation of Roberto Bolano’s 900-page novel, “2666,” underwritten by a grant from the Roy Cockrum Foundation. The foundation was established to support projects at nonprofit theaters that “reach beyond their normal scope of activities and undertake ambitious and creative productions.”
“2666,” directed by Robert Falls, the Goodman’s artistic director, and Seth Bockley, its playwright-in-residence, will be supported entirely by the foundation’s grant, which the theater characterized as “in the high six or low seven figures.”
Falls called the gift, which the theater had not solicited, “extraordinary.”
“I’ve never in my life had a foundation or corporation or individual come to us and say their desire was to give money toward work on that scale,” he said. John the Evangelist in Cambridge, Mass., an Episcopal monastery where he took vows of poverty, in 2003.
Until now, Cockrum who moved to Knoxville, Tenn., in 2009 to take care of his aging parents, had made virtually no public comment about his giving plans.
But in an interview Friday, he traced the impulse behind the gift to a trip several years ago to London, where he saw Nicholas Hytner’s lavish adaptation of Philip Pullman’s “His Dark Materials” at the Olivier Theatre.
“There was a huge cast, a score from start to finish, special effects every five minutes and a very enthusiastic young audience on the edge of their seats,” Cockrum said.
But after the curtain fell, he felt “rather sad.”
Cockrum, who won $259.8 million and chose to take a lump-sum payment of $153.5 million, established the foundation and installed Benita Hofstetter Koman, an experienced arts administrator he knew from their days together at the Actors Theatre of Louisville, Ky., as the executive director.
Cockrum, who has also made a personal gift of $1 million to the University of Tennessee Medical Center, declined to give the size of the foundation endowment.
