Content in this section focuses on theatre created outside of urban and suburban centers. Here, artists discuss the unique challenges and opportunities of creating work in rural environments all over the world. The Rural Theatre series, focusing on artists and companies in the United States, is a great place to start.
The Latest
Video
in:vzbl Festival—A Festival Dedicated to Rural Communities
Performance Videos and Artist Talks from the 2025 Festival in Timișoara, Romania
Thursday 5 March to Tuesday 10 March 2026
Timișoara, Romania
Essay
In Rural Minnesota, This Resident Ensemble Model Thrives
The Commonweal Theatre Company acts as a model for thriving theatre in a rural setting. Robert Hubbard details the ways the company’s resident ensemble operates, highlighting their artist/administrator doubling, artistic excellence, and embeddedness in the surrounding community.
Since her arrival at a small liberal arts college in Kentucky, Jayme Kilburn has grown its theatre program into a valued local cultural institution. By positioning theatre as a social service, she writes, she has cultivated a community that wants to show up.
Through one-on-one transformational encounters, Oakley Boycott’s SENSES build community in the mountains of Wyoming. Anne Mason tracks the development of the series—including SILENCE, ECHO, and NOISE—and the ways SENSES makes space for participants to rage or write or sit in contemplation and collectivity.
Interdisciplinary artists and producers Jennie Hahn and Sharon Mansur are connecting performance and community through their work in Indigenous-settler relations and Arab American artist communities, respectively. In this MicroCosmos encounter, they consider the practices and experiments at the heart of their work.
Eseovwe Emakunu and Dennis U. Obire, co-founders of the Shanty Theatre, chronicle their work in the Adagbabiri Community in Bayelsa State, which is one of the most educationally deprived states in Nigeria. Using a theatre for development model, the group worked with local children to create a performance that demonstrated the importance of education in the social development of a community and nation.
Carlos Uriona and Jennifer Johnson, co-artistic directors at Double Edge Theatre, connect with Jeffrey Mosser to discuss how working in rural Massachusetts for over thirty years has enabled them to share art on the world stage.
Writer and educator Jonathan P. Eburne details how he first came to know of Double Edge Theatre and the Ohketeau Cultural Center and discusses their unique approach to worldmaking, land sharing, and theatremaking.
In 2021, Ian McFarlane and Laura Stinson of North Barn Theatre launched into a bicycle tour that brought a puppet circus to rural communities across Nova Scotia. They discuss the creation and performance of their show, which joyously embraced troublemaking as a path to activism.
Founder, Ensemble Member, and Former Artistic Director of Lookingglass Theatre Company, David Catlin, shares how their limitless aesthetic showcases their Chicago-based artists across the country. In addition we dive into their unique shared leadership model, their growth and goals for the future, and how tension with your board members can be a good thing.
Jacob Juntunen shares how the MFA playwriting program at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale adapted their new play festival for the online world and how open-access software and streaming platforms helped students at the rural school transcend geography.
The Experience of a Chilensis Clown Circus Theatre Company / Experiencia de una compañía chilensis de circo teatro payasx
11 November 2020
Members of Chile’s Compañía Siató—Valentina Paz Berger Correa, Jean Carlo Montecinos Carreño, Hernán Enrique Huerta Vargas, and Felipe Jesús Pereira Godoy—discuss clowning across Latin America; their show Sacrilegio, which denounces and ridicules religion, the church, and the police; the political duty of the artist; and more.
Un vistazo a las salas de teatro independiente en México
3 July 2019
Mariela López talks about her research on independent theatres across Mexico, including the challenges, the benefits, and recommendations for anyone wanting to create a company. / Mariela López nos habla de su investigación sobre los teatros independientes en México, incluyendo los desafíos, los beneficios y recomendaciones para cualquiera que quiera crear uno.
Marine Leduc discusses the nomadic theatre traditions of the Hognon family, who travel southwestern France staging plays that explore their Tsigane identity. / Marine Leduc explore les traditions du théâtre nomade des Hognons, une famille qui voyage à travers le Sud-Ouest de la France et y joue des pièces qui parcourt leur identité tsigane.
Joan Schirle, Founding Artistic Director of Dell’Arte International, presents an overview of the history of Dell’Arte’s Rural Residency Program and the program’s relationship to community engagement in Northern California.
Josh Platt on Double Edge Theatre’s Latin American Spectacle in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts, Cada Luna Azul / Once a Blue Moon in Ashfield, Massachusetts, and the Springfield Spectacle, in Springfield, Massachusetts.
Mncedisi Baldwin Shabangu writes about his career as an acclaimed actor and director in South Africa, and the decisions that led him to currently work exclusively in a rural village.
Jennifer Johnson, of The Charlestown Working Theater, who has trained with Double Edge Theatre, interviews Stacy Klein, Founding Artistic Director of Double Edge about the evolution of Double Edge’s training method.
Roadside Theater and Pregones/Puerto Rican Traveling Theater presented a conversation about BETSY!The Appalachian-Puerto Rican Musical livestreamed on the global, commons-based peer-produced HowlRound TV network at howlround.tv on Thursday 12 February at 7 p.m. EST (New York) / 6 p.m. CST (Chicago) / 4 p.m. PST (Los Angeles).
What South Carolina Taught Me About Radical Theatermaking
5 September 2014
Over my time in Spartanburg, I learned firsthand that South Carolina is not a homogenous place. There are all kinds of people in South Carolina, people with voices and powerful stories. A lot of those stories are invisible because of the cultural and political climate that surrounds them. That doesn’t mean they aren’t there—but it means that to those living outside of the state, they don’t exist.
Matthew Glassman & Amrita Ramanan of Double Edge Theatre
14 March 2014
Listen to weekly podcasts hosted by David Dower as he interviews theater artists from around the country to highlight #newplay bright spots. This week: Matthew Glassman and Amrita Ramanan of Double Edge Theatre, located in Ashfield, Massachusetts.
Chris Garza visits The Visit staged in rural Minnesota, and reflects on how immersive theater invites audiences complicity in a play about mob psychology, vengance, and greed.
