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Community-responsive art to amplify local stories and support grassroots movement building on a national scale.
There is a cultural deficit in this country. When the civil liberties of historically underrepresented groups continue to face serious threat and our nation is stalled in an ever-polarizing inability to engage in productive dialogue, we artists and cultural workers must engage communities to which we might not normally find ourselves in proximity, excavate the barriers standing between us, address community concerns with artistic ferocity, with bold questions and daring choices, and provoke audiences with questions (old and new) about who is given access to our nation’s promise of opportunity and who is being systematically shut out.
By collaborating with communities across the nation to tell their real stories on stage, Notch engages the voices that brick and mortar theaters are not reaching, personalizes important social issues for people on all sides of a conversation, raises awareness in a compelling way, drives change on a national scale, and prompts meaningful, lasting engagement at a grassroots level. Theater is able to connect with an audience in a deeply personal way, and we strive to push the boundaries of what that connection can achieve. |
long ago. The simple things come back to us. They rest for a moment by our ribcages then suddenly reach in and twist our hearts a notch backward." -Let the Great World Spin
current projects
click here for production history and a calendar of programming
Remember2019
Notch joins Mauricio Salgado, Arielle Julia Brown, Carlos Sirah and Yazmany Arboleda, along with community partners The Delta Cultural Center, The Elaine Legacy Center, and the Boys, Girls, and Adults Community Development Center for Remember2019--an effort to make space for the congregation of Black communities in the Arkansas Delta. Since 2017, our work has been to support and facilitate local practices of self-determination, reflection, and healing as directly related to the mass lynching of 1919, the lasting effects of racial terror, and the current and future health of these communities. Remember2019 was awarded aMAP Fund grant, and has been featured on HolwRound and Monument Lab, profiled by the U.S. Department of Arts and Culture.
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Through Time
With support from coLAB Arts , Notch Theatre Company is working with the Reformed Church of Highland Park's Affordable Housing Corporation (RCHP-AHC), which helps resettle refugees from around the world in central New Jersey, provides home studies and post-release services to unaccompanied refugee minors, and assists people who have been subjected to human trafficking.
This program creates original theater pieces with the diverse refugee community served by RCHP-AHC, in an effort to share the story of how their mutual aid service work transforms lives. Check out the blog or read a Broadway World article about the collaboration's launch. |
Wild Home
Wild Home was developed with Jessica Kahkoska to take an odyssey across America, collaborating with rural towns significantly pressured by fossil fuel industries.
The program is currently on the ground in the Ohio River Valley and is working with SILA and Bright Shores in Alaska, collaborating with the Iñupiat communities of the North Slope in their fight for land sovereignty. Wild Home was awarded a creative residency in Montana with the Taft-Nicholson Center, an NEA ArtWorks grant, and Our Town grant, Travel and Exchange grants from the Network of Ensemble Theaters, and has been featured on HowlRound and Broadway World. |
“The news in those days was full of war and migrants and nativists, and it was full of fracturing too, of regions pulling away from nations, and cities pulling away from hinterlands,
and it seemed that as everyone was coming together everyone was also moving apart. Without borders nations appeared to be becoming somewhat illusory, and people were questioning what role they had to play.” ― Mohsin Hamid, Exit West
and it seemed that as everyone was coming together everyone was also moving apart. Without borders nations appeared to be becoming somewhat illusory, and people were questioning what role they had to play.” ― Mohsin Hamid, Exit West
Voices from a Pandemic
Since April 2019, Voices from a Pandemic has been inviting artists and cultural workers to remotely collect testimony from people on the frontline, to hear their experiences during this worldwide health crisis. This includes anyone continuing to do the in-person work that keeps a country and its people alive and functioning, not only essential workers but also the frontline protesters who are risking their safety and health to fight for a revolution that uplifts us all.
Notch has launched the first installment of a digital story bank and has presented three workshops of plays that feature theatre-makers and community stories from all over the world. Voices is a communal creation, collaborating with more than 100 cultural workers, community members and artists. More on Broadway World. |
Anna Karenina: a riff
In Gwen Kingston's fresh adaptation of Anna Karenina, Russians play melodicas to an original, folk-punk score by Christie Baugher, Yan Li, Teresa Lotz, and Will Turner. Natalie Rine, Associate New York Critic, says that "Notch’s production electrifies as a rollicking, fresh investigation of Tolstoy’s classic novel, bursting with a folk-rock score that pokes and prods at the consequences of female rebellion, bringing bold new questions into an arresting, quasi-contemporary conversation on the role of women in families, communities, and countries. [...] this small but strong production is a declaration of Notch Theatre Company’s visceral, scintillating point of view that is a force to be reckoned with as even the best of current day Broadway’s appeal to address modern themes pales in comparison." Click here to read the review or here for an interview with the makers.
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FIT
FIT, conceived by Marina Morrissey and written by Gwen Kingston, follows the story of Carrie Buck, who in 1927 was the test case for a Supreme Court ruling allowing the forcible sterilization of women deemed “feeble-minded,” a ruling that has never been overturned. In a contemporary storyline, Don and June, who have Down Syndrome, want to have a baby. June’s mother is taking her to court because she believes her daughter isn’t equipped to raise a child. She is not "FIT." Developed in partnership with members of the intellectual disability community, FIT premiered at White Heron Theatre on Nantucket, was presented at La Mama Studios in NYC, and with Trinity Rep (in collaboration with Spectrum Ensemble) in Providence, RI. Read N Magazine's article on the Nantucket production.
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Fiscal Sponsorship
We are honored to fiscally sponsor Black Spatial Relics, founded in 2016 by Arielle Julia Brown at the Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice at Brown University. The program supports the development of new performance works about slavery, justice, and freedom by emerging and mid-career artists.
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Wingspace Theatrical Design's Relief Fund provides unrestricted, rapid relief microgrants to freelance designers and dramaturges experiencing acute financial strain due to COVID-19.
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thank you to our supporters.
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- JKW Foundation -
- Amy Aquino & Drew McCoy - - Jody Wagner - - Tracy Nayer - - Sabrina Sikes Thornton - - Bill & Chloe Cornell - - Jennifer & Matthew Rowland - - Colin & Cathy Walker - - Tali Pressman - - Mauricio & Cindy Salgado - - Bob & Toni Teague - - Kimberly & Clay Clement - - The Loewenthals - - Hurwitz Creative - - Brown University/Trinity MFA Program - - Look What She Did! - - Enfamilia Inc. - - SnackPass - 
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© Notch Theatre Co. 2021
