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Community-Engaged Theatre

In this section, you’ll find content about making theatre that is deeply engaged—often throughout the creation and production process—with a specific community. Questions are explored around navigating the relationship between the artist(s) and the community, as well as creating meaningful and authentic experiences. The essay “Not Another Memory Play,” about the creation of “a durational, grassroots engagement with the Black community of the Arkansas Delta called Remember2019,” is a great place to start, as is this conversation from CultureHub about collectives devising new grassroots engagement strategies.

The Latest

Video
Stages of Change: Empowering Artists Through Embodied Practice
Friday 22 May 2026
New York City
Podcast
Reflection
by Jan Cohen-Cruz
19 March 2026
Podcast
Aftermath
by Jan Cohen-Cruz
12 March 2026
A promotional graphic for See Me: Prison Theatre and Love.
Podcast
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
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
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 performer holds a large suitcase onstage.
Essay
4 February 2026

Amid flareups of anti-immigrant sentiment in South Africa, The Last Country offers a much-needed platform for migrant voices. Tonderai Chiyindiko discusses the production, its origins in oral history data, and the conversations it generates. 

A promotional graphic for See Me: Prison Theatre
Podcast
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 Bridge Between Realities.
Podcast
27 January 2026

How do our own needs inform and drive our work with community? In this episode, Tara Khozein and Martin Boross sit down with theatre artist Jeremy Louise Eaton and journalist Graham “GG” Griffith at Chocolate Church Arts Center after Memory Bath, a multidisciplinary site-specific theatre piece on place memory.

A promotional graphic for See Me: Prison Theatre
Podcast
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 Bridge Between Realities.
Podcast
20 January 2026

How can theatre artists enter a space as outsiders and create work there in a way that does not fall into our habits of colonialism and consumerism? In this episode, Tara and Martin sit down with Wanda Strukus and Matthew Glassman at Chocolate Church Arts Center in Bath, Maine.

event poster for we will dream 2025.
Series

WE WILL DREAM: New Works Festival 2025

The Water Remembers

Now in its second year, the festival embraces the theme The Water Remembers, exploring the transformative power of water as a vessel of remembrance, connection, and cultural legacy.

A man in a suit and mask standing with his hands in the air with a banner behind his head.
Series

Latinx Theatre Leaders at the Forefront

If history is made by those who write it, then the Latinx Theatre Leaders at the Forefront series serves as a historical intervention by adding to the limited existing documentation of Latinx theatre leaders.This series convenes Latinx theatre leaders to amplify their experiences in a field that has ignored their existence and failed to provide enough resources to build the infrastructure necessary for success. In an effort to continue legacy and leadership cultivation, these interviews pair established theatremakers with new and future leaders, creating intergenerational conversations that model horizontal mentorship and learning. Join us to share in these leaders’ hope for future generations and to learn how they have mobilized that hope by creating community and producing work that centers Latinx stories.

Parallel Tracks 2.0 Teaser image.
Series

Parallel Tracks 2.0

Parallel Tracks 2.0 gathers diverse voices of Canadian theatre artists and producers to explore the ways in which anti-oppressive approaches are part of our creative work, in live spaces as well as digital ones. Originally commissioned by and presented in partnership with Toronto's Undercurrent Creations, conversations about care, community engagement, and consent take centre stage in this series. From navigating ethics in contracting, to intergenerational storytelling, this series reflects on ways of gathering and collaborating in online creative spaces. This series is in part supported by the Canada Council for the Arts.

Series

Talleres for Dreaming

An ongoing series featuring artists that explore creative and artistic processes driven by the insurgent possibility of collective dreaming

two people kneel in front of ornate architecture, petting a black and white cat
Series

Kunafa and Shay

Kunafa and Shay focuses on Middle Eastern and North African (MENA)/Southwest Asian and North African (SWANA) theatre—highlighting classic and contemporary plays and theatremakers, spotlighting community-engaged work in the region and diaspora, and analyzing the past, present, and future of MENA/SWANA theatre in the United States. 

screen shot of a tweet by @pangmeli that reads "I’m all for activist communities, queer communities etc, but communities are few and far between. what we have more of are scenes. Two signs that it’s a scene: it doesn’t have multiple generations (children, elders) and the members all have a suspiciously similar aesthetic."
Series

Conversations Across Generations

Dialogues with UK based Performance Artists

Each of the dialogues in this series speaks of the connection between political activism, creativity, and spirituality— and highlights the importance of intergenerational knowledge-sharing for the future of the Live Arts and Theatre sectors of the UK.

Series

An Other Budapest

This series examines the state of community theatre in Hungary.

Series

Pregones Theater & Roadside Theater Series on BETSY!

Pregones Theater and Roadside Theater review their twenty-one-year artistic collaboration and their Off-Broadway production of BETSY!.

Series

Cornerstone's Bridge Tour

A series on Cornerstone Theater's touring production of The Tempest.

Series

Audience Engagement

A series exploring the diverse relationships between theatre and community through the personal narratives and innovative methods of practice from a select group of artists and practitioners.

Series

New Orleans, Louisiana

A series featuring voices from in and around New Orleans's theatre community.

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