current programs
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. Our work is to support and facilitate local practices of self-determination, memory, and reflection, 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 a prestigious MAP Fund grant, profiled by the U.S. Department of Arts and Culture, invited to speak at NPN's annual conference, USDAC's Citizen Artist Salon, and the Children’s Defense Fund Samuel Dewitt Proctor Institute.
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Voices from a Pandemic
Since April, Voices from a Pandemic has been inviting artists and cultural workers to remotely collect testimony from frontline workers to hear their experiences during this worldwide crisis. This includes anyone continuing to do the in-person work that keeps a country and its people alive and functioning, not only essential employees but also the frontline protesters who are risking their safety and health to fight for a revolution that uplifts us all.
As we embark on vaccine distribution, Notch has launched the first installment of a digital story bank and is presenting a workshop of the plays, featuring 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. Click here to RSVP for the workshop on January 29th and 30th. |
Wild Home
Notch is collaborating with Jessica Kahkoska for Wild Home, which takes an odyssey across rural America, traveling to 15 rural communities identified by The Wilderness Society as under tremendous threat for oil, gas, and mineral extraction on public lands.
In each community, we develop a series of plays, through public storytelling events, to be performed by community and professional actors in outdoor, wilderness spaces. The program is currently collaborating with the community of the Wayne National Forest in Ohio. Wild Home was awarded a creative residency in Montana with the Taft-Nicholson Center, an NEA Artworks grant, Travel and Exchange grants from Network of Ensemble Theaters, and has been featured on HowlRound and Broadway World. |
coLAB Refugee Program
coLAB Arts and Notch Theatre Company are working with the Reformed Church of Highland Park's Affordable Housing Corporation (RCHP-AHC) to create 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.
In November of 2020, roughly 2200+ individuals were given humanitarian release from New Jersey ICE detention centers -- a prison system that has recorded the highest coronavirus rate in the nation. Notch is honored to collaborate with coLAB Arts and RCHP to document and use the arts to share forward the crucial testimonies from these refugee communities and the organizations supporting them. Check out this Broadway World article about the collaboration. |
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." Read the full review here and read an interview with the makers here.
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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 related to COVID-19.
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thank you to our supporters.
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- JKW Foundation -
- Drew McCoy & Amy Aquino - - Bill & Chloe Cornell - - Jennifer & Matthew Rowland - - Byron Gross & Ricky Tovim - - Colin & Cathy Walker - - Stuart & Susan Berton - - Tali Pressman - - Mauricio & Cindy Salgado - - Bob & Toni Teague - - Jody Wagner - - Tracy Nayer - - Sabrina Sikes Thornton - - Kimberly & Clay Clement - - The Loewenthals - - Hurwitz Creative - - Brown University/Trinity MFA Program - - Look What She Did! - - Enfamilia Inc. - |
© Notch Theatre Co. 2018
