programs
click here for production history and a calendar of programming
Remember2019Notch 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, we have supported and facilitated 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. These joint explorations have resulted in a touring blues concert, publication of a book, a community mural designed by youth, a story sharing institute, an annual artist residency, and more.
Remember2019 was awarded a MAP Fund grant, an NEA ArtWorks grant, and has been featured on HolwRound, Monument Lab, and profiled by the U.S. Department of Arts and Culture. More at Remember2019.org |
Through TimeThrough Time is in it's fifth year of creating original theatrical events with refugees and asylees to address the issues these communities face in trying to find home.
In 2022, Notch was honored to work with St. Ann's Warehouse and The Walk to invite Little Amal to New York City . In 2020 & 2021, Notch worked with coLAB Arts, The Black Community Watchline, and 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, creating original theater pieces with the diverse refugee communities served by these organizations. Check out the blog or read a Broadway World article about the collaboration's launch. Currently, we are offering theater workshops for refugee youth in New Jersey in collaboration with Church World Services, an international organization transforming communities around the globe through just and sustainable responses to hunger, poverty, displacement, and disaster. |
Wild HomeCo-Created with Jessica Kahkoska, Wild Home, which takes an odyssey across America, collaborating with rural towns significantly pressured by fossil fuel industries.
In each community, we develop a series of plays, through public storytelling events, that are performed by community and professional actors in outdoor, wilderness spaces. The program is currently collaborating with communities in Alaska, Colorado, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Utah and West Virginia. Wild Home was awarded a creative residency in Montana with the Taft-Nicholson Center, an NEA Artworks grant, multiple Travel and Exchange grants from Network of Ensemble Theaters, and has been featured on HowlRound and Broadway World. Most recently, the program brought communities from across the country to our nation's capital in Washington D.C. You can learn about that event in this article in this article in American Theatre Magazine. |
Amazon and Walmart are the behemoths of the 21st Century, much like Big Steel and Big Auto were at the beginning of the 20th Century. The demands that working people are making on these companies will shape the working person’s future for decades to come.
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. Gwen Kingston is authoring this original, comedic play entitled Café Utopia. |
The Grate, spearheaded by playwright Liz Appel, who 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? The Grate was piloted with 10 artists in spring of 2022 and then workshopped at Notch's annual retreat in summer 2022.
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This new play by Lydia Blaisdell is a deliciously naughty dive into the love triangle between the renowned composer Arnold Schönberg, Schönberg’s wife, Mathilde, and Austrian painter, Richard Gerstl. Set in 1900's Austria, this uproarious comedy partners with Queer, non-binary, and Trans communities to challenge how we frame historical narratives and to interrogate who we center in those stories. Ice Factory 2023, taking place at the New Ohio Theatre June 28 - August 12, features seven new works over seven weeks, including "gerstl took the easy way out", directed by Ashley Teague.
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Voices from a Pandemic Since April 2020, 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. More on Broadway World. |
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FITFIT, 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.
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RecoveryCo-developed with Jayne McLendon, Recovery brings communities in recovery (i.e. people healing from traumatic injury, addiction, loss and grief, eating disorders, ancestral and generational trauma, etc.) together in the creation of an interdisciplinary performance combining video, interactive theater, meditation, and a museum installation to raise awareness, build community, and create spaces for healing. Recovery has recently been awarded a residency with HB Studio in NYC for July 2023.
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Fellowships & RetreatsEach year, Notch hosts a retreat on the Broad River in North Carolina where female identifying artists are invited to connect, commune, recharge, and workshop new Notch programs. Additionally, we award two annual fellowships - the Maurice Richards Fellowship, which offers a microgrant to young citizen artists and community organizers, and our Generous of heART Fellowship, dedicated in memory of Darlene Windom, and created for cultural workers who use their art to uplift their communities.
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thank you to our supporters.
- Amy Aquino and Drew McCoy -
- Bill & Chloe Cornell - - Shannon Morzov - - Cotton & Julie Nash - - Mauricio & Cindy Salgado - - Bob & Toni Teague - - W Trust - - JKW Foundation - - Distracted Globe Foundation - - Cindy & William Horr - - Jody Wagner - - Sabrina Sikes Thorton - - Moira Squier - - Byron Gross & Ricky Tovim - - Colin Walker - - Sandy Mailliard - |
© Notch Theatre Co. 2021
Long ago, 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."