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, featured on HowlRound and Monument Lab, and invited to present at NPN's annual conference, USDAC's Citizen Artist Salon, and the Children’s Defense Fund Samuel Dewitt Proctor Institute. |
Through Time
As part of our Through Time program, Notch was honored to work with St. Ann's Warehouse and The Walk to invite Little Amal to New York City where (alongside 100 immigrant, asylee, and refugee youth) she will meet the Statue of Liberty for a one time only event in fall 2022.
Little Amal is a 12 foot tall living artwork, a giant puppet of a 10-year-old Syrian refugee girl who has travelled across 12 countries to bring attention to the issues facing refugees, asylees and especially unaccompanied donors worldwide. Learn more or get involved here. 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. |
Wild Home
Co-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. |
Gen U
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Recovery
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gerstl took the easy way out
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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.
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. |
Co-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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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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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.
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The Grate
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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Fellowships & Retreats
Each 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.
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- 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 - 
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© Notch Theatre Co. 2021
