production history
Since our founding in 2017, Notch has engaged with more than 25 communities across 22 states, Australia, Canada, Mexico, India, Lebanon, Puerto Rico & Rwanda.
This January we awarded our Maurice Richards fellowship to Kenneth Cox and the Boys, Girls and Adult Development Center in Marvell, Arkansas, for their 2022 Day of Service: Remembering Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., which is part of the Delta Visual and Performing Arts Project. This annual fellowship offers a microgrant to young citizen artists and community organizers.
In February Notch hosted an Artist Advisory appreciation event to celebrate our Artist Advisory Committee and all the artists and cultural workers that make this work possible!
In March Wild Home was invited to the Appalachia Studies Conference in West Virginia to present Gwen Kingston's short play featuring Notch Artist Advisory members Sergio Mauritz Ang and Anita Castillo-Halvossen alongside community members and activists Margie Hiermer, Rena Moore, Melissa Thomas, Lois Bower-Bjornson, and Janice Blanock.
April saw us award our Generous of heART fellowship, dedicated in memory of Darlene Windom, and created for cultural workers who use their art to uplift their communities. This year the microgrant went to Lia Rome and Liz Appel's Parent/Caregiver Playwriting Group, formed in response to the demands on caregiver-artists, particularly throughout the pandemic. The project aims to create community and offer artistic and professional support through monthly meetings and an annual reading series. Current participants include: Eleanor Burgess, Mathilde Dratwa, Enid Grahan, Mary Elizabeth Hamilton, Deneen Reynolds-Knott, Ying Ying Li, Erin Mallon, Deepa Purohit, and Adam Symkowicz.
In May we were overjoyed to finally reinstate our annual retreat, which has been on hold since the pandemic began. Artists gathered on the Broad River in North Carolina to connect, commune, recharge, and workshop several brand spankin’ new Notch programs, including:
In June, thanks to a grant from the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council and a space residency at HB Studio Notch workshopped a draft of DICK in New York City. The play by Gwen Kingston is based on the novel Moby Dick by Herman Melville. In this comedic, community-engaged adaptation, an all womxn and non-binary cast battles thunderstorms, whirlpools, boredom, and the occasional whale to resurrect the Pequod and ask: …Why? The workshop featured: Anita Castillo-Halvorssen*, Lennox T. Duong*, Ashley Hicks, Gwen Kingston, Oriana Lada, Isabel Pask*, Marina Morrissey, and Yasmin Pascal. Aaluk Edwardson* and Hayley St. James participated as dramaturges. * Indicates a Notch Artist Advisory Member.
July took us to Arkansas for Remember2019 where we held a memorial event to honor all the lives lost during the Pandemic. And we kicked of the next leg of the program called the Black Cypress: book tour.
September will find us in Chicago supporting on Arielle Julia Brown’s production of FallawayInto -- a site-specific, biographic ritual performance about Arielle's aunt, a trailblazer for the Black Trans community.
Additionally, Sovereignty Stories , a partnership with the Native Alaskan community of the North Slope, is hosting a series of remote events featuring intergenerational media pieces depicting ancient Inuit legends about land sovereignty. AND the project has been invite to present at Arctic Fest on September 3rd at 5:15pm at Centennial Center Theater, Pioneer Park in Fairbanks, Alaska.
On October 1st, Notch is bringing Little Amal to New York City! Little Amal a 12 foot-tall living artwork, a giant puppet of a 10-year-old Syrian refugee girl who has travelled over 9,000km across 12 countries to bring attention to the issues facing refugees, asylees and especially unaccompanied donors worldwide.
Then on October 9th, after a workshop at the Eugene O'Neill Theater, gerstl took the easy way out will have a public sharing in New London, Connecticut. gerstl took the easy way out by Lydia Blaisdell is a deliciously naughty dive into the infamous love triangle between Arnold Schoenberg, Schoenberg’s wife Mathilde, and the painter Richard Gerstl. Set in early 1900s Bavaria, this uproariously comedic new play partners with Queer, non-binary, and Trans communities to challenge how we frame historical cultural narratives and interrogate who we center in those stories.
And this November we are launching Gen U ! Spearheaded by playwright James McManus, this project engages the individuals and organizations behind the current unionization movement in creation of an original theatrical work that speaks to this urgent moment in America.
Production History 2021:
January 2021: Notch released the first installment of the Voices from a Pandemic digital story bank!
Notch hosted a remote reading of Wild Home, by Gwen Kingston, with the communities of Appalachia and the Ohio River Valley .
Notch presented a two-night event featuring a workshop of the Voices from a Pandemic plays with artists and community voices from all over the globe.
February & March 2021: Sovereignty Stories is active in the North Slope of Alaska, Wild Home is active in Colorado, and the coLAB Refugee Project is active on-the-ground in New Jersey.
April 2021: Notch presented a virtual sharing of Remember2019's Black 'n da Blues: Stories and Songs from the Arkansas Delta.
And a first reading of the coLAB Refugee Project took place in New Jersey.
May 2021: Voices from a Pandemic was re-broadcast for a one-time-only Memorial Day weekend event.
Wild Home: Sovereignty Stories in Alaska was awarded an NEA Our Town Grant.
June & July 2021: Remember2019 was on the ground in Arkansas with the release of Black Cypress: A Phillips County Survival Guide and the coLAB Refugee project began rehearsals, eventually playing to 200 people on July 25th in New Jersey.
August 2021: Wild Home: Ohio River Valley, by Gwen Kingston, took place on-the-ground in Ohio and Pennsylvania.
September 2021: Sovereignty Stories launched their virtual storytelling campaign in the North Slope of Alaska .
Production History 2020:
January 2020: Wild Home: An American Odyssey presented at Live@Jacks in collaboration with GoodCinema and The Colorado Environmental Film Festival in Denver, Colorado.
Notch began fiscally sponsoring Black Spatial Relics - a Philladelphia-based new performance residency about slavery, justice and freedom.
March 2020: Awarded a Network of Ensemble Theatre's Exchange grant, Wild Home kicks off in Ohio, partnering with communities of the Wayne National Forest
Notch received a residency with HB Studio in New York City to workshop a new play in spring 2020. Due to COVID-19, the residency is rescheduled for spring 2021. We presented a reading of the project in development remotely.
April 2020: Notch launched Voices from a Pandemic
Notch partnered with Wingspace Theatrical Design to form the Wingspace Relief Fund and issues over $50,000 in microgrants to artists experiencing acute financial strain from COVID-19.
May 2020: Remember2019 launched a digital archive of over 100 stories from the Black community of the Arkansas Delta.
June 2020: Wild Home is awarded an NEA Art Works grant.
Monument Lab released a four part series on Remember2019 where program creators discuss vision and values, process, aesthetics, and impact.
July 2020: Chautauqua Theater Company invited Notch to workshop Voices from a Pandemic with their company of actors in western New York.
Remember2019 launched Black Cypress: A Black Survival Guide with the communities of South Phillips County, Arkansas.
HowlRound published "Not Another Memory Play Remember2019" about our Remember2019 collaboration in Arkansas.
August 2020: Notch launched Sovereignty Stories a Wild Home partnership with Bright Shores Creative Decolonization in Alaska.
October 2020: Wild Home was on the ground story gathering in Appalachia and the Ohio River Valley.
December 2020: Notch begins a new partnership with coLAB Arts to document and share forward stories from the refugee communities of New Jersey.
Production History 2019:
April 2019: Wild Home presented at Delicious Orchards in Hotchkiss, Colorado on Saturday, April 27th.
June 2019: Remember2019 presented Black 'N Da Blues: Stories and Songs from the Arkansas Delta 1919-2019 in the Miller Annex at the Delta Cultural Center in Helena, AR on June 17th and at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas on June 23rd.
Plus a workshop and staged reading of Anna Karenina took place at HB Studios in New York on June 27th.
July 2019: Artistic Director, Ashley Teague traveled to Rwanda to collaborate with The Peace Studio on development of a piece that brings Rwandan and American artists together to reflect on the Rwandan Genocide. Tour of this piece is slated for the states in 2021.
August 2019: Notch hosted an artist residency on the Broad River in North Carolina to workshop an original adaptation of an all-female Moby Dick by Gwen Kingston.
September/October 2019: Remember2019 presented a series of events (including the callin' down the road residency) to commemorate the centennial of the 1919 Elaine mass lynching in Arkansas and Mississippi.
November 2019: The Flea Theater in NYC announces Notch as one of their anchor partners.
November/December 2019: Our Anna Karenina project played at The Flea Theatre in New York City from November 23rd through December 20th.
December 12th, Artistic Director, Ashley Teague presented on the Wild Home program at the Conservation Foundation in Sarasota, Florida.
Production History 2018:
January/February 2018: Notch received a $10,000 Exchange Grant from Network of Ensemble Theatres for Remember2019.
March 2018: Thanks to a generous commission by Trinity Repertory Company, we presented a workshop of FIT in partnership with Spectrum Theatre Ensemble, a theatre company dedicated to working with neuro-diverse actors on March 17th, 18th & 19th at 87 Empire St, Providence, Rhode Island 02903. The showings were free and open to the public.
April 2018: Notch and a team of nine artists and musicians workshopped the first iteration of Anna Karenina in Mineral Wells, Texas.
May 2018: Notch produced a reading of FIT at La Mama Studios in NYC on May 18th. The workshop invited local producers and theaters to support the play in becoming a fully realized NYC production. And Notch received a $30,000 MAP Fund grant for Remember2019.
June 2018: Remember2019 hosted a story sharing institute and Juneteenth Celebration in South Phillips County, Arkansas June 18-19.
July 2018: We kicked off our new partnership with The Wilderness Society, traveling to the North Fork of the Gunnison region of Colorado to conduct story circles for Wild Home. And Mauricio Salgado and Arielle Julia Brown spoke at the Children's Defense Fund Proctor Conference about Remember2019.
August 2018: Wild Home director Ashley Teague and playwright Jessica Kahkoska were invited to a creative residency in Montana and Utah with the Taft-Nicholson Center.
September/October 2018: Remember2019 presented Black 'N Da Blues: Stories and Songs from the Arkansas Delta 1919-2019 in Phillips County, Arkansas, September 29th - October 2nd. And HowlRound Article featured our Wild Home program (formerly the Too Wild To Drill program).
November 2018: Notch was invited to White Heron Theatre on Nantucket to workshop our new rock opera, adaptation of Anna Karenina.
December 2018: Our Wild Home program returned to the North Fork Valley of Colorado for a first reading of an original play based on community testimony. And Remember2019 collective members Arielle Julia Brown and Mauricio Salgado spoke about the program at the National Performance Network's annual Conference.
Production History 2017:
May 2017: Founding Artistic Director, Ashley Teague received the 2017 Embark Fellowship Grant for Social Innovation in Entrepreneurship and raised over $30,000 in matching contributions to launch Notch Theatre Company. Additionally, Teague directed a production of Invasion! by Jonah Hassem Khemiri at Brown University, giving students and faculty a chance to come together to discuss Islamophobia in thier community.
June 2017/July 2017: Notch developed and directed a new play for the Chautauqua Institute (in Chautauqua, New York) which put local stories on stage and explored how our nation and its diverse communities are or are not communicating.
July 2017/August 2017: Remember2019 spent over a month South Phillips County, Arkansas working alongside community partners The Delta Cultural Center (DCC), Waves of Prayer Ministries, The Elaine Legacy Center, The Boys and Girls Club of Helena and West Helena, and the Boys, Girls, Adults Community Development Center (BGACDC) in Marvel. We developed several joint-explorations including a community mural for the Visual and Performing Arts Project at the BGACDC, a summer theatre program for 60 to 70 youth, and the co-production of a staged reading of Scapegoat by Christina Ham, a play that looks at the mass lynching of 1919 and takes place in South Phillips County. For more on those events visit remember2019.org
October 2017: Notch workshopped FIT at White Heron Theatre on Nantucket in Massachusets. To see images form that workshop and read N Magazine's cover click here.
November 2017: Notch partnered with a middle school in East San Jose, California, to pilot an innovative, community-engaged theatre program offering youth a place to voice and explore challenging issues through artistic medium.
December 2017: Notch received our official nonprofit status from the federal government!!!
In February Notch hosted an Artist Advisory appreciation event to celebrate our Artist Advisory Committee and all the artists and cultural workers that make this work possible!
In March Wild Home was invited to the Appalachia Studies Conference in West Virginia to present Gwen Kingston's short play featuring Notch Artist Advisory members Sergio Mauritz Ang and Anita Castillo-Halvossen alongside community members and activists Margie Hiermer, Rena Moore, Melissa Thomas, Lois Bower-Bjornson, and Janice Blanock.
April saw us award our Generous of heART fellowship, dedicated in memory of Darlene Windom, and created for cultural workers who use their art to uplift their communities. This year the microgrant went to Lia Rome and Liz Appel's Parent/Caregiver Playwriting Group, formed in response to the demands on caregiver-artists, particularly throughout the pandemic. The project aims to create community and offer artistic and professional support through monthly meetings and an annual reading series. Current participants include: Eleanor Burgess, Mathilde Dratwa, Enid Grahan, Mary Elizabeth Hamilton, Deneen Reynolds-Knott, Ying Ying Li, Erin Mallon, Deepa Purohit, and Adam Symkowicz.
In May we were overjoyed to finally reinstate our annual retreat, which has been on hold since the pandemic began. Artists gathered on the Broad River in North Carolina to connect, commune, recharge, and workshop several brand spankin’ new Notch programs, including:
- Reality or Not… a collaboration with visionary artist Jayne McLendon to partner with people in recovery through an innovative and interdisciplinary format that weaves personal narrative, humor, interactive theatre, video, movement, meditation, and a museum installation to raise awareness and build community.
- The Grate, spearheaded by playwright Liz Appel, seeks to explore what gratitude means at this moment in time. How does it appear, how is it coded for different people in different places? What can we learn about the way our communities function and what they value through a collective gratitude process?
In June, thanks to a grant from the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council and a space residency at HB Studio Notch workshopped a draft of DICK in New York City. The play by Gwen Kingston is based on the novel Moby Dick by Herman Melville. In this comedic, community-engaged adaptation, an all womxn and non-binary cast battles thunderstorms, whirlpools, boredom, and the occasional whale to resurrect the Pequod and ask: …Why? The workshop featured: Anita Castillo-Halvorssen*, Lennox T. Duong*, Ashley Hicks, Gwen Kingston, Oriana Lada, Isabel Pask*, Marina Morrissey, and Yasmin Pascal. Aaluk Edwardson* and Hayley St. James participated as dramaturges. * Indicates a Notch Artist Advisory Member.
July took us to Arkansas for Remember2019 where we held a memorial event to honor all the lives lost during the Pandemic. And we kicked of the next leg of the program called the Black Cypress: book tour.
September will find us in Chicago supporting on Arielle Julia Brown’s production of FallawayInto -- a site-specific, biographic ritual performance about Arielle's aunt, a trailblazer for the Black Trans community.
Additionally, Sovereignty Stories , a partnership with the Native Alaskan community of the North Slope, is hosting a series of remote events featuring intergenerational media pieces depicting ancient Inuit legends about land sovereignty. AND the project has been invite to present at Arctic Fest on September 3rd at 5:15pm at Centennial Center Theater, Pioneer Park in Fairbanks, Alaska.
On October 1st, Notch is bringing Little Amal to New York City! Little Amal a 12 foot-tall living artwork, a giant puppet of a 10-year-old Syrian refugee girl who has travelled over 9,000km across 12 countries to bring attention to the issues facing refugees, asylees and especially unaccompanied donors worldwide.
Then on October 9th, after a workshop at the Eugene O'Neill Theater, gerstl took the easy way out will have a public sharing in New London, Connecticut. gerstl took the easy way out by Lydia Blaisdell is a deliciously naughty dive into the infamous love triangle between Arnold Schoenberg, Schoenberg’s wife Mathilde, and the painter Richard Gerstl. Set in early 1900s Bavaria, this uproariously comedic new play partners with Queer, non-binary, and Trans communities to challenge how we frame historical cultural narratives and interrogate who we center in those stories.
And this November we are launching Gen U ! Spearheaded by playwright James McManus, this project engages the individuals and organizations behind the current unionization movement in creation of an original theatrical work that speaks to this urgent moment in America.
Production History 2021:
January 2021: Notch released the first installment of the Voices from a Pandemic digital story bank!
Notch hosted a remote reading of Wild Home, by Gwen Kingston, with the communities of Appalachia and the Ohio River Valley .
Notch presented a two-night event featuring a workshop of the Voices from a Pandemic plays with artists and community voices from all over the globe.
February & March 2021: Sovereignty Stories is active in the North Slope of Alaska, Wild Home is active in Colorado, and the coLAB Refugee Project is active on-the-ground in New Jersey.
April 2021: Notch presented a virtual sharing of Remember2019's Black 'n da Blues: Stories and Songs from the Arkansas Delta.
And a first reading of the coLAB Refugee Project took place in New Jersey.
May 2021: Voices from a Pandemic was re-broadcast for a one-time-only Memorial Day weekend event.
Wild Home: Sovereignty Stories in Alaska was awarded an NEA Our Town Grant.
June & July 2021: Remember2019 was on the ground in Arkansas with the release of Black Cypress: A Phillips County Survival Guide and the coLAB Refugee project began rehearsals, eventually playing to 200 people on July 25th in New Jersey.
August 2021: Wild Home: Ohio River Valley, by Gwen Kingston, took place on-the-ground in Ohio and Pennsylvania.
September 2021: Sovereignty Stories launched their virtual storytelling campaign in the North Slope of Alaska .
Production History 2020:
January 2020: Wild Home: An American Odyssey presented at Live@Jacks in collaboration with GoodCinema and The Colorado Environmental Film Festival in Denver, Colorado.
Notch began fiscally sponsoring Black Spatial Relics - a Philladelphia-based new performance residency about slavery, justice and freedom.
March 2020: Awarded a Network of Ensemble Theatre's Exchange grant, Wild Home kicks off in Ohio, partnering with communities of the Wayne National Forest
Notch received a residency with HB Studio in New York City to workshop a new play in spring 2020. Due to COVID-19, the residency is rescheduled for spring 2021. We presented a reading of the project in development remotely.
April 2020: Notch launched Voices from a Pandemic
Notch partnered with Wingspace Theatrical Design to form the Wingspace Relief Fund and issues over $50,000 in microgrants to artists experiencing acute financial strain from COVID-19.
May 2020: Remember2019 launched a digital archive of over 100 stories from the Black community of the Arkansas Delta.
June 2020: Wild Home is awarded an NEA Art Works grant.
Monument Lab released a four part series on Remember2019 where program creators discuss vision and values, process, aesthetics, and impact.
July 2020: Chautauqua Theater Company invited Notch to workshop Voices from a Pandemic with their company of actors in western New York.
Remember2019 launched Black Cypress: A Black Survival Guide with the communities of South Phillips County, Arkansas.
HowlRound published "Not Another Memory Play Remember2019" about our Remember2019 collaboration in Arkansas.
August 2020: Notch launched Sovereignty Stories a Wild Home partnership with Bright Shores Creative Decolonization in Alaska.
October 2020: Wild Home was on the ground story gathering in Appalachia and the Ohio River Valley.
December 2020: Notch begins a new partnership with coLAB Arts to document and share forward stories from the refugee communities of New Jersey.
Production History 2019:
April 2019: Wild Home presented at Delicious Orchards in Hotchkiss, Colorado on Saturday, April 27th.
June 2019: Remember2019 presented Black 'N Da Blues: Stories and Songs from the Arkansas Delta 1919-2019 in the Miller Annex at the Delta Cultural Center in Helena, AR on June 17th and at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas on June 23rd.
Plus a workshop and staged reading of Anna Karenina took place at HB Studios in New York on June 27th.
July 2019: Artistic Director, Ashley Teague traveled to Rwanda to collaborate with The Peace Studio on development of a piece that brings Rwandan and American artists together to reflect on the Rwandan Genocide. Tour of this piece is slated for the states in 2021.
August 2019: Notch hosted an artist residency on the Broad River in North Carolina to workshop an original adaptation of an all-female Moby Dick by Gwen Kingston.
September/October 2019: Remember2019 presented a series of events (including the callin' down the road residency) to commemorate the centennial of the 1919 Elaine mass lynching in Arkansas and Mississippi.
November 2019: The Flea Theater in NYC announces Notch as one of their anchor partners.
November/December 2019: Our Anna Karenina project played at The Flea Theatre in New York City from November 23rd through December 20th.
December 12th, Artistic Director, Ashley Teague presented on the Wild Home program at the Conservation Foundation in Sarasota, Florida.
Production History 2018:
January/February 2018: Notch received a $10,000 Exchange Grant from Network of Ensemble Theatres for Remember2019.
March 2018: Thanks to a generous commission by Trinity Repertory Company, we presented a workshop of FIT in partnership with Spectrum Theatre Ensemble, a theatre company dedicated to working with neuro-diverse actors on March 17th, 18th & 19th at 87 Empire St, Providence, Rhode Island 02903. The showings were free and open to the public.
April 2018: Notch and a team of nine artists and musicians workshopped the first iteration of Anna Karenina in Mineral Wells, Texas.
May 2018: Notch produced a reading of FIT at La Mama Studios in NYC on May 18th. The workshop invited local producers and theaters to support the play in becoming a fully realized NYC production. And Notch received a $30,000 MAP Fund grant for Remember2019.
June 2018: Remember2019 hosted a story sharing institute and Juneteenth Celebration in South Phillips County, Arkansas June 18-19.
July 2018: We kicked off our new partnership with The Wilderness Society, traveling to the North Fork of the Gunnison region of Colorado to conduct story circles for Wild Home. And Mauricio Salgado and Arielle Julia Brown spoke at the Children's Defense Fund Proctor Conference about Remember2019.
August 2018: Wild Home director Ashley Teague and playwright Jessica Kahkoska were invited to a creative residency in Montana and Utah with the Taft-Nicholson Center.
September/October 2018: Remember2019 presented Black 'N Da Blues: Stories and Songs from the Arkansas Delta 1919-2019 in Phillips County, Arkansas, September 29th - October 2nd. And HowlRound Article featured our Wild Home program (formerly the Too Wild To Drill program).
November 2018: Notch was invited to White Heron Theatre on Nantucket to workshop our new rock opera, adaptation of Anna Karenina.
December 2018: Our Wild Home program returned to the North Fork Valley of Colorado for a first reading of an original play based on community testimony. And Remember2019 collective members Arielle Julia Brown and Mauricio Salgado spoke about the program at the National Performance Network's annual Conference.
Production History 2017:
May 2017: Founding Artistic Director, Ashley Teague received the 2017 Embark Fellowship Grant for Social Innovation in Entrepreneurship and raised over $30,000 in matching contributions to launch Notch Theatre Company. Additionally, Teague directed a production of Invasion! by Jonah Hassem Khemiri at Brown University, giving students and faculty a chance to come together to discuss Islamophobia in thier community.
June 2017/July 2017: Notch developed and directed a new play for the Chautauqua Institute (in Chautauqua, New York) which put local stories on stage and explored how our nation and its diverse communities are or are not communicating.
July 2017/August 2017: Remember2019 spent over a month South Phillips County, Arkansas working alongside community partners The Delta Cultural Center (DCC), Waves of Prayer Ministries, The Elaine Legacy Center, The Boys and Girls Club of Helena and West Helena, and the Boys, Girls, Adults Community Development Center (BGACDC) in Marvel. We developed several joint-explorations including a community mural for the Visual and Performing Arts Project at the BGACDC, a summer theatre program for 60 to 70 youth, and the co-production of a staged reading of Scapegoat by Christina Ham, a play that looks at the mass lynching of 1919 and takes place in South Phillips County. For more on those events visit remember2019.org
October 2017: Notch workshopped FIT at White Heron Theatre on Nantucket in Massachusets. To see images form that workshop and read N Magazine's cover click here.
November 2017: Notch partnered with a middle school in East San Jose, California, to pilot an innovative, community-engaged theatre program offering youth a place to voice and explore challenging issues through artistic medium.
December 2017: Notch received our official nonprofit status from the federal government!!!
© Notch Theatre Co. 2019
