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Jan Cohen-Cruz

Jan Cohen-Cruz performed with the NYC Street Theater in the early 1970s. She taught at NYU Drama for 28 years, creating their applied theater program. She directed Imagining America: Artists and Scholars in Public Life (2007–2011), a consortium of socially engaged artists, designers and humanists affiliated with higher education, launching their journal Public. She was director of field research for A Blade of Grass, supporting socially engaged artists. She is co/author or co/editor of nine books, most recently See Me: Prison Theater Workshops and Love, the basis of this podcast, and Performing Emancipatory Rites of Passage, coedited with Kevin Bott (Routledge, Spring 2026). Jan facilitates theater and writing workshops, often incorporating the work of August Boal, most recently with NYC im/migrants. www.jancohencruz.com

An art project of composed of quotes pasted onto a large board.
Essay

On Theatre, Home, and Housing 

16 January 2024

Jan Cohen-Cruz delves into the process of bringing The Most Beautiful Home… Maybe, a multi-city project that aims to use art to influence how people think about housing, to Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley. Through this process, Jan saw how theatre can bring together housing advocates from different walks of life to find their commonalities and collectively imagine a world with equitable housing for all.

an outdoor theatre production
Essay

Participatory Research Results and Further Questions

Expanding Where, Why, How, and With Whom Artists Make Work

20 July 2020

Jan Cohen-Cruz shares the results of her recent survey about community-based and socially engaged theatremakers in the United States, which looked at commonalities across the field, the practices and principles adhered to, where people work and with whom, and more.

a person sitting at a large filled-in whiteboard
Essay

Expanding Where, Why, How, and With Whom Artists in the United States Work

Invitation for Participatory Research

6 May 2020

Jan Cohen-Cruz invites theatremakers working in community-based and socially engaged art in the United States to take part in research about commonalities across the field, the practices and principles adhered to, where people work and with whom, and more.

a group of people stand around a piece of artwork on the floor
Essay

Beyond the “Other”

Seeking Commonality in a Divided World

31 October 2019

Jan Cohen-Cruz looks at how collaborative art-making can help bridge the divide between groups of people with different identities.

Essay

Must you be of a certain political stripe to do community-based theater?

4 September 2013

Jan Cohen-Cruz responds to Daniel Jones' post: can anyone from any political background produce theater? The answer is yes... if you look at the many different forms that theater can take.

See Me: Prison Theatre Episode 10: Reflection promotional graphic.
Podcast

Reflection

19 March 2026

Contributors share final reflections on the attraction of prison theatre workshops. They explore the importance of being seen in all one’s complexities and discuss how imagining the world on stage manifests a vision for the real world. Finn and Jan affirm their workshop experience together.

A promotional graphic for See Me: Prison Theatre
Podcast

Aftermath

12 March 2026

This episode covers what happens to Jan after she is banned from the workshop and Finn when he is released. Ausettua and Kathy create the Graduates for women to continue theatre when they get out, and the Free Mama Glo campaign launches. Jess supports of returning citizens. Rand discusses the challenges of reentry.

A promotional graphic for See Me: Prison Theatre
Podcast

Collapse

5 March 2026

In this episode, personal relationships between Finn and Jan and Alex and Kevin fall apart. Collective efforts like the Trenton workshop and the street theatre house, which took great care to build, collapse. How long it takes to build something; how quickly it can tumble.

A promotional graphic for See Me: Prison Theatre
Podcast

In the Name of Love

26 February 2026

In this episode, wonderful and terrible things are done while in the thrall of love. Jan and Finn go beyond their comfort level in trying to provide what the other needs. Alex and Kevin’s loving friendship is undercut by racial tension. Jess is unfairly accused of romantic ties in her prison workshops.

A promotional graphic for See Me: Prison Theatre and Love.
Podcast

Experiential Education

19 February 2026

In this episode, looking at the world from each other’s perspectives stretches participants personally and artistically. This can be sobering, like dealing with white privilege; inspiring, like seeing the value of self-agency for all; or both, like Jan and Finn’s different ideas about love and community.

A promotional graphic for See Me: Prison Theatre
Podcast

Prison Shows

12 February 2026

In this episode, shows develop in the various workshops. The impact of making, performing, and being seen in multiple dimensions deepens interpersonal relationships and a sense of purpose. Jan and Finn’s relationship thrives through the meaningfulness of collectively creating with each other and the group.

A promotional graphic for See Me: Prison Theatre
Podcast

Building Trust and Affection

5 February 2026

In this episode, the intimacy of self and group expression brings loving relationships of all kinds into being-–deep friendships, Jan and Finn’s romance, familial feelings, and ancestral bonds–with joys, like unexpected connections, and complications, including the challenge of racial difference.

A promotional graphic for See Me: Prison Theatre
Podcast

The Individual and the Collective

29 January 2026

This episode takes a closer look at the interplay of particular participants and group dynamics in the workshops. They get to know each other by making theatre together and empathize with people from radically different circumstances. Jan and Finn begin a slow courtship. The drama club becomes a safe space for Mama Glo.

A promotional graphic for See Me: Prison Theatre
Podcast

Workshop Beginnings

22 January 2026

The different prison theatre workshops get started. This episode explores their diverse atmospheres, why people join and who they are, early exercises, initial challenges, first impressions, hopes, and expectations. Finn and Jan meet on Day One, her twenty-first birthday.

A promotional graphic for See Me: Pison Theatre
Podcast

It Started with a Calling

15 January 2026

What leads people to prison theater workshops? This episode begins six intertwined, first-person tales of these workshops, framed by a love story between Finn, who was incarcerated, and Jan, who cofacilitated. 

See Me: Prison Theater Workshops and Love podcast teaser.
Series

See Me: Prison Theater Workshops and Love

See Me: Prison Theater Workshops and Love explores how the intimacy that podcast host Jan Cohen-Cruz and so many others have experienced in prison theatre workshops is possible in such a dehumanizing environment.

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