Applied Theatre

Pluralism is inherent in community partnerships, whether hyperlocal or national. As the One Nation/One Project team built public arts partnerships in eighteen sites across the country, they sought pluralistic strategies to respond to a question of growing importance: What future is possible at the intersection of our increasing diversity and diminishing cohesion? And how do we reach it?

Collaborating with individual community members in a theatremaking process can greatly enrich a project, but the process is not simple. Jacob Buttry offers reflections to help artists structure their community-based theatre projects in a democratic way while respecting the time, labor, and capacity of all involved.

Georgia Evans is the writer and director of Walls: Chloe’s Story, a Forum Theatre play about people with chronic vulvovaginal pain—something she doesn’t deal with. She discusses how to create a show about other’s intimate stories in a collaborative, trustworthy way.

Carmen Salvador shares about Fundación Quien Cuenta Eres Tú’s Children’s Participative Theatre program in Chile and the way they used Playback Theatre to facilitate a space for under-resourced children’s creativity and reflection on their experiences.   

Beto O’Byrne discusses the work of three theatre artists in New York whose acts of cultural resistance contribute to the movement for a free Palestine.

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.

Theatre artist Michael Rohd shares a lyrical call for more civic imagination, community care, and care-centric processes in the theatre field.

Play House is a collectively stewarded performance space near the border of Detroit and Hamtramck that has become a place of convening and creation for the neighborhood. Richard Newman, a co-manager of the space and co-director of The Hinterlands ensemble, traces connections between creative practice, community, grief, and an outdoor ramp at Play House.

Although healthcare clowns have existed for more than forty years, their work isn’t widely understood. Amelia Parenteau discusses the substantial patient benefits that healthcare clowns provide while diving into their history and current practices.

Taylor Leigh Lamb and Sabine Decatur share emails, letters, social media posts, and more from the future that represent the period of profound change in the theatre industry beginning in 2021.