The Strand Theatre – the only performing arts venue owned and operated by the city of Boston – is getting a helping hand from the Wu administration this season in the form of $200,000 in grants aimed at spurring more programming at the Uphams Corner venue. It’s a positive signal that the mayor and her team are putting some thought and resources behind the venerable stage that has been in service since 1919.

The $200k pot is being split among a dozen individuals and organizations in the performing arts space in Boston, including the Company One Theatre, which booked the Strand last month for a four-week run of Boston native Francisca Da Silveira’s play, “can i touch it?”

“This grant gave us the opportunity to reinforce our mission – amidst a pandemic – by returning to the Strand with a story focused on its own community, told by a writer who calls both Roxbury and Dorchester home,” said Summer L. Williams, the play’s director.

Other recipients of Strand grants include the Tony Williams Dance Center, a familiar name to Dorchester audiences. Williams is planning a “multimedia piece that tells the story of African slavery in America and includes dancers and spoken word.” Another neighborhood-based troupe – 4 Star Dance Studio – will use its grant from the Wu team to stage a 20th anniversary event. And the Roxbury Center for the Performing Arts will pump its grant dollars into “Nubian Nativity,” an all-Black show planned for this November at the Columbia Road theatre.

“The Strand Theatre has been an iconic landmark in the Dorchester neighborhood for more than a century,” Wu said this week, “and it’s great to see such a diverse group of presenters sharing their work at the theater over the next year.

“This grant program provides us with a unique opportunity to support those presenters, while also making these productions more accessible to the surrounding community.”

The city is planning another round of grants – from $5,000 up to $80,000 – aimed at bolstering the Strand’s calendar for next year. Any grantee that gets $25,000 or more will be required to offer at least some free tickets to the community— or a “pay-what-you-can” model for admission. The next round will be open to groups focused on dance, music, theater, film, and video. Applications will open in the fall and be posted on boston.gov/strand.

All of which is a novel approach to helping artists and the Strand venue get renewed traction as we continue to navigate the Covid pandemic. So, too, is an effort by city and state leaders to get the theatre a liquor license to support special events and offer refreshment sales during shows. This makes a lot of sense and we hope the Legislature moves expeditiously to approve the measure.

As we have declared more than once from this space, the Strand desperately needs an activist and thoughtful mayor in its corner to succeed under city stewardship. These latest actions indicate that Mayor Wu and her team have a keen understanding of that dynamic and are taking action to back that up.