ROCKPORT — The Everyman Repertory Theatre announced it had received two grants from the Maine Humanities Council, a third from the Maine Arts Commission and Maine Humanities Council combined, a fourth from Maine Community Foundation's Expansion Arts Fund and a fifth from the Leonard C. and Mildred F. Ferguson Foundation. The grants total $8,000, about 10 percent of the organization’s operating budget, and fund a wide variety of projects.

The two Maine Humanities Council grants of $1,000 each, from the Council’s 13th Amendment and Mini-grant funds, have been earmarked to help cover the Theatre group’s election night special at the end of October this year, when they will be staging readings of two political docu-dramas: Gore Vidal's The Best Man and Chatting with the Tea Party by Rich Orloff. The readings will be on Oct. 29 and 30, right before the election.

The Arts and Humanities’ $1,000 grant will help fund the Theatre’s collaboration in October with the Maine Holocaust and Human Rights Center. This will feature performances in October at the Rockport Opera House and the Center's Michael Klahr Center of Lanford Wilson's Tony-award winning play, Tally's Folly. UMO's politics professor Michael Erb will speak before two of the Sunday matinees. The Expansion Arts Fund’s $2,500 grant will help fund the group’s next overseas tour – taking Casablanca to North Haven. Finally, a $2,500 grant from the Leonard C. and Mildred F. Ferguson Foundation will help fund two programs focused on young people in the theater: the Plays for Pupils Program, which provides free tickets to Everyman Rep shows to area high school students and the Everyman Rep Intern Program, which funds the employment of students who are studying or will be going on to study professional theater arts degrees.

For more information, visit everymanrep.org.