Isabel Nelson

2026 Mid-Career Professional Development Grantee | $5,000

From Physical Theater to Ritual Arts: gaining the necessary foundation to co-create rites of passage as public-art response to incarceration, and a site of individual and communal transformation

Physical theater devising artist Isabel Nelson is moving into a creative chapter that leverages her skills as a director and creator of ensemble-created work into the creation of community ritual. An artist committed to using song, theater, and ritual as a healing response to incarceration, Isabel will use the professional support from FORECAST to train with Ritual4Return, a New Jersey-based organization that co-creates rites of passage with formerly-incarcerated individuals to mark their return to community.

Isabel Nelson (she/they) is an award-winning theater director, creator and performer who is transitioning her creative practice towards ritual arts. In 2010, she founded Twin Cities-based physical theater ensemble Transatlantic Love Affair (TLA), which collaboratively creates original works from the reimagined bones of old stories, and served as artistic director of the company until 2022. She is the recipient of the 2012 Emerging Artist Ivey Award and the National Theater Conference’s 2015 Emerging Professional Award, and is currently a 2025-26 McKnight Theater Artist Fellow at the Playwrights’ Center. Most recently, Isabel has brought their creative practice to bear in collaboration with folx incarcerated at Stillwater Correctional Facility and Shakopee Correctional Facility, and is currently exploring the healing power of ritual to mark the threshold of homecoming for those individuals and communities most directly impacted by the carceral system. Isabel believes in singing and storytelling as vessels for healing, and ritual theater as sacred action – a chance to imagine, embody, and create the just and generative world we deserve.

The McKnight Foundation generously enables Forecast to provide Professional Development Grants for mid-career artists seeking to expand their work in the field of public art. Forecast mid- and early-career grants are designed to support independent projects, leadership development, professional development, risk-taking, multidisciplinary approaches, and collaborative problem-solving in the field of public art.