Every new show comes with a lingering sense of anxiety for Heather Christian during previews. But “Oratorio for Living Things,” at the Signature Theater, has come with reassurance: On the first day of rehearsals a few weeks ago, Christian learned she would be a MacArthur Foundation fellow.

Christian, 44, a composer and playwright, is one of 22 recipients of this year’s award, popularly known as a “genius grant.”

Honorees, described by the foundation as exceptionally creative people with a record of significant accomplishments and the potential for continued achievement, receive $800,000 over five years. Since 1981, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation has awarded the no-strings-attached fellowship to 1,153 people.

The class includes an atmospheric scientist who studies tropical weather, a seventh-generation Wabanaki basket maker and a novelist focusing on Native Americans.

“The 2025 MacArthur Fellows expand the boundaries of knowledge, artistry and human understanding,” Kristen Mack, a foundation vice president, said in a statement.

Fellows do not apply for the honor; they are selected by a pool of anonymous nominators across the country and evaluated by a rotating selection committee of leaders in the arts, sciences, humanities and other areas.

That means the award comes as a surprise to recipients. Hahrie Han, a political scientist, answered a call from an unknown number one afternoon and was “flabbergasted.”

“I wanted to scream silently in my office,” she said.

Tonika Lewis Johnson, 45, a photographer and artist from Chicago, pulled over while driving (she guessed the call might be to discuss a project with the foundation). Toby Kiers, 49, an evolutionary biologist who studies fungi, sat on the floor and cried.

The fellows said the award was not only unexpected, but was also a validation that their niches of interest — which in many cases began with childhood curiosity — could contribute to larger conversations and exploration of community, civic engagement and innovation.

In high school, Johnson would commute from Chicago’s South Side to the North Side, noticing how vacant lots and deteriorating houses would quickly diminish in predominantly white neighborhoods. This became the impetus for her “Folded Map Project,” pairing corresponding addresses on opposite quadrants of the city’s grid to examine segregation, housing injustice and commonality.

Christian’s work, which explores spirituality through musical theater (“Oratorio” posits time as sacred, she said), stemmed from performing in church as a child.

For Han, 50, who studies participation in public life, her foray into the field evolved over time. She grew up in an apolitical household in Texas, the daughter of Korean immigrants. As a student at Harvard, she took only one required political science class and would have told people she was not interested in the subject — until she became involved in student activism.

Han has spent the last several years studying those organizing around racial justice in an Ohio evangelical megachurch. The result was her 2024 book, “Undivided.”

“A lot what I’ve tried to do over the course of my career is try to understand what was so intoxicating about that experience for me as a student and then how do I make that possible for as many people as possible?” she said.

After fellows received the call, they were instructed to share the news with no more than one person. They were not told who the other honorees were.

Kiers, the biologist, is the first fellow whose research focuses on fungi. The recognition sparked a personal euphoria and a wild excitement (“like magic”) for the as-yet-unaware colleagues in her lab.

Kiers likens their work to that of subterranean astronauts, exploring a vast landscape of biodiversity and connectivity that is largely untouched and invisible. In 2021, she founded the Society for the Protection of Underground Networks, to map and protect the global underground web of fungi. In the field, her team wears jumpsuits that read: “Protect the undergrounds.”

“It just made me feel so proud of the team,” she said of the honor, adding, “It’s the most kind and ambitious and clever group of explorers that I’ve ever met and they all love fungi. Everybody loves fungi.”

The other 2025 fellows are:

Ángel F. Adames-Corraliza, an atmospheric scientist

Matt Black, a photographer

Garrett Bradley, a filmmaker

Nabarun Dasgupta, an epidemiologist with a focus on harm reduction

Kristina Douglass, an archaeologist

Kareem El-Badry, an astrophysicist

Jeremy Frey, a basket artist

Ieva Jusionyte, a cultural anthropologist

Jason McLellan, a structural biologist

Tuan Andrew Nguyen, a multidisciplinary artist

Tommy Orange, a fiction writer

Margaret Wickens Pearce, a cartographer

Sébastien Philippe, a nuclear security specialist

Gala Porras-Kim, an interdisciplinary artist

Teresa Puthussery, a neurobiologist and optometrist

Craig Taborn, an improvising musician and composer

William Tarpeh, a chemical engineer

Lauren K. Williams, a mathematician