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Notch Theatre Company (New York, NY) and Delta Cultural Center (Helena, AR) partnered on the first residency for Remember2019, an ensemble project created to reflect on and respond to the history of lynching in America. In a series of six artistic residencies over the next six years, Black cultural workers in the Arkansas Delta will create performances around topics of self-determination, memory, and reflection as related to the mass lynching of 1919. Titled Black 'n da Blues, the residency gathered local blues musicians to collect stories and create performance around the question: where’s hope in the Blues?

On Friday, January 22nd, NET hosted a Community Forum: Beginning to Heal Through Connection. 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.

Touchstone Theatre (Bethlehem, PA) and Pregones/Puerto Rican Traveling Theater (Bronx, NY) engaged in a yearlong intercultural and intergenerational exchange centering on strategies for art-centered community engagement. Working in English and Spanish, the project engaged a diverse group of Anglo, Latinx, and other participants in ensemble-based playmaking, leading to a headline performance in the October 4-13 Festival UnBound in Bethlehem, PA.

Storytellers, singers, and musicians from Guardians of the Flame Maroon Society (New Orleans, LA) and poet, playwright, and performer Deidre R. Gantt (Washington, DC) created a performance inspired by 2019 (the 400th year since African slavery began in America), New Orleans' indigenous and Mardi Gras Indian culture, and the experience of being American in different parts of the African diaspora.

Ninth Planet (Philadelphia, PA) consulted with cultural strategist and youth advocate Michael O’Bryan (Philadelphia, PA) to design a new model of community responsive programming. Using Homeworld, a performance experience for 3-to-18-month-old babies and their caregivers, they reimagined their work to extend beyond a singular artistic experience and create potential for long-lasting community building opportunities.

Eric Bass of Sandglass Theater (Putney, VT) and Linda Parris-Bailey (Knoxville, TN) shared and learned each other's approaches to writing, dramaturgy, puppetry, and song; they will examine how both artists stand in the moment of passing the legacy of their theaters into younger hands, while continuing to be creators of theater. The resulting project addresses both an exchange of creative practices and the act of leadership succession.

TAPIT/new works (Madison, WI) engaged in a series of theater and movement workshops with St. Mary’s Care Center (Madison, WI) and Verona School District’s 18-21 Year Old Transition Program (Madison, WI) in order to create a multimedia theater work titled Our Stories, Our Process. This process refined and expanded TAPIT/new works’ model for community-based artmaking with social services partnersSt. Mary’s Care Center. The work concluded with a performance featuring an inter-generational cast of participants, including skilled nursing facility residents and youth with disabilities.

Swim Pony Performing Arts (Philadelphia, PA) collaborated with Toasterlab (North Hollywood, CA), tech specialists in location-triggered performance, to develop Philadelphia Story Trails. Together the companies prototyped a unique mobile app that invokes the experience of immersive theater through a real-time drama delivered to audiences at specific points as they travel along the Philadelphia Circuit Trail system.

Albany Park Theater Project (Chicago, IL) partnered with Third Rail Projects (Brooklyn, NY) to continue the exchange of methodologies and collaborative creation process that previously resulted in the 2016 world premiere of Learning Curve. During Summer 2018, APTP and TRP will came together in Chicago for the first stage of devising a new, immersive, site-specific production that was created with and performed by APTP’s youth ensemble.

On Friday, January 22nd, NET hosted a Community Forum: Beginning to Heal Through Connection. 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.