Building off our last Community Forum, we invited the NET community to gather again on Friday, September 3, 2021 around the remote connections made by individual and ensemble members this year. NET’s Community Forum: Continuing the Work heard directly from a group of our Winter 2020/2021 NET/TEN Remote Connection Mini-Grants recipients who opted to share their experiences in a live-discussion format, and were eager to dialogue with the NET community.

Featured Remote Connections made by individual and ensemble members: A Host of People, Bearded Ladies Cabaret, Duke City Repertory Theatre, Four Larks, One World Circus, Roadside Theater, Sayda Trujillo, and Wry Crips Disabled Women's Theatre

On May 4, 2021, NET gathered in community as we looked towards the most critical areas of need to help plan for a shifting landscape and field.

We explored the following questions:

• How has our time in isolation and great civil unrest reshaped our thinking for the future?

• What concerns about the shifting landscape and field are keeping you up at night?

• What support do we need to reemerge while also taking the lessons learned with us?

On Friday, January 22nd, NET hosted a Community Forum: Beginning to Heal Through Connection. As we turn towards reopening, NET is mindful of the role ensemble can and needs to play in the healing inside our own community and with broader society. We heard from a group of our Spring 2020 NET/TEN Remote Connection Mini-Grants recipients about the activities they embarked on last year and then opened up the discussion to dialogue with one another.

Facilitated by Claudia Alick, Board Co-President, NET and Executive Producer, Calling Up; and Leah Cooper, Artistic Director, Wonderlust Productions

• Moving forward, how do we present theatre safely in shared physical space?

• To that end, if we are still re-adjusting to sharing content in virtual spaces; what is “theatre” if it is not live?

• How do we shore up our individual and collective reserves and resources for continued crises? How do we support artists ethically, and with generosity and love?

THIS EVENT HAS PASSED

Facilitated by Todd London (Board Member, NET; Director of Theatre Relations, Dramatists Guild of America; Head of the MFA Playwriting Program, School of Drama, The New School) and Corinna Schulenburg (former NET Board Member; Co-Founder/Creative Partner,Flux Theatre Ensemble; Director of Communications, Theatre Communications Group)

• How are you finding respite from the inevitable "apart-ness" (loneliness / isolation / disconnection) that this crisis is amplifying?

• How are you specifically using your artistic instincts, training, tools to address this challenge?

• Have you had ideas that could use the collaboration of others to get off the ground?

Facilitated by Alisha Tonsic, Executive Director, NET

• What are you doing to keep your ensembles connected during this time?

• What strategies, mantras, ideas can you share with other ensemble theater makers who are struggling to stay connected to one another?

• In what areas are you still running into road blocks, and could use the support of the larger community to help you feel more resourceful and prepared?

As our communities manage the spread of COVID-19, and many limit non-essential travel, it's important to make sure the knowledge-sharing doesn't stop, and we take advantage of our technology tools to keep us connected.

While we had to cancel much of NET's EMFUSA2020 activity in Albuquerque during Tricklock's Revolutions festival (and the festival itself was also severely impacted (please see the company's statement on Facebook), we used our platform to host a Virtual Town Hall on March 14th, in partnership with Tricklock, to hear our community's concerns, and begin to assess where NET can be most supportive during this challenging time.