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About Wild Home

Wild Home takes an odyssey across America, collaborating with rural towns significantly pressured by fossil fuel industries. In each area, Wild Home partners with local community to hold public story-sharing events. A professional playwright then crafts plays based on shared testimony and community feedback. The plays are performed  in outdoor spaces by folks from the area and by professional actors and they are interspersed with facilitated dialogue about local efforts to protect our neighborhoods and wilderness. The program is designed so the plays can travel from rural areas to city centers, as a means of exploring and deepening conversation around climate change, land sovereignty and the industrialization of public lands at a grassroots level and on a national, policymaker scale. ​ 

Wild Home is currently on the ground in the Ohio River Valley with a FREE event taking place August 27th in Washington, PA where we have been partnering with amazing organizations including the Indigenous Environmental Network, Ohio Environmental Council, Ohio Environmental Council Action Fund, FracTracker Alliance, Earth Works , Save Our Roots, Keep Wayne Wild, Public Herald, Center for Coalfield Justice and Clean Air Council.

Wild Home is also working with collaborators in Alaska-- Bright Shores and SILA (Sovereign Iñupiat for a Living Arctic)-- partnering with the Iñupiat communities of the North Slope in their fight for land sovereignty.  More information on the full scope of this project, entitled Sovereignty Stories, can be found here.  

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Wild Home aims to magnify stories about American Wilderness areas under threat and the people who depend on them, specifically at this crucial moment in time—when the country faces the greatest loss to public lands in history. These plays not only mobilize grassroots civic engagement in towns all over the nation, they also document each community’s unique history and culture at a particularly urgent moment in that community’s journey. Because they are based on true stories, the plays are marked by an authenticity of character and voice, and a sometimes-disarming honesty. They are very real and very accessible, and have the rare power to touch people on a deeply personal level, galvanizing communities to take action. 

 In April 2019, Wild Home partnered with the community of the North Fork of the Gunnison region of Colorado to present original plays in a free event with food, drink, live music and a panel discussion featuring local organizations: Citizens for a Healthy Community, North Fork Valley Creative Coalition, Western Slope Conservation Center, Colorado Farm and Food Alliance.  (Pictured below)

                  Photos by Jim Brett, video by David Jacobson, video editing by Nikki Sills.

Wild Home is engaging  with communities around the The Wayne National Forest in Ohio, the Appalachian trail in Virginia, Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Bears Ears National Monument and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in Utah, The Grand Canyon in Arizona, the Mojave Trails National Monument in California, Mount St. Helens in Washington, Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in Minnesota, Badger-Two Medicine andParadise Valley in Montana, Northern Red Desert in Wyoming, Owyhee Desert Sagebrush in Nevada, and Carlsbad Caves and Rivers in New Mexico. If you are a resident of these areas, please don't hesitate to connect with us: info@notchtheatre.org. And to learn more about the issues facing  these communities, visit The Wilderness Society.

Learn more about the project in HowlRound's  Theatre in the Age of Climate Change series and by checking out this Broadway World interview with program creators Jessica Kahkoska and Notch Theatre Company. Wild Home is the recipient of a Taft-Nicholson Center for the Arts and Humanities residency at the University of Utah,  an NEA ArtWorks grant, an NEA Our Town Grant and is made possible by Drew McCoy and Amy Aquino, the Common Sense Fund and the Network of Ensemble Theaters, supported by lead funding from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.  ​​

The process begins with Story Circles

Playwright engaging in research at the Living Farm in Delta County

First read of the plays with feedback from the community of Paonia, Colorado

Venue scouting in the Black Canyon Of The Gunnison National Park, CO

Program Co-Creators Jessica Kahkoska and Ashley Teague

Come for the social-justice theatre, stay for the lamb selfies.

​​Additional Resources and News: 

• Download the Wild Home info packet here.
• The program was featured in HowlRound's  Theatre in the Age of Climate Change series, as well as on Broadway World. 
• ​The hidden consequences of New Mexico’s latest oil boom: High Country News article on Carlsbad residents experiencing health impacts and  how the science behind their woes lags behind the pace of drilling.
• Can Minnesota’s Boundary Waters Wilderness Be Saved From Mining?: Adventure Journal discusses how the White House siding with the mining industry has halted an environmental study ordered by its predecessor and fast-tracking a new, more environmentally hazardous type of mining in the region.
• Indigenous matriarchs stand together in dark times:  The National Observer shares the story of a group of eight North American Indigenous elder women who have joined forces to protect the sacred knowledge needed for future generations to face a climate in crisis.
• What Remains of Bears Ears: Washington Post article on Trump's reduction to Bears Ears National Monument in Utah.
• Lost lands? The American wilderness at risk in the Trump era.: The Guardian's  exclusive on a new study revealsingthe vast extent of public lands being opened up to the energy industry.
• Public lands top Rep. Debra Haaland’s agenda: One of the first Native American women elected to Congress is fighting fossil fuel development on ‘the most pristine and beautiful places in our country.’
• Download The Wilderness Society's report on each of the 15 wilderness spaces where Wild Home is partnering.
• Download The Wilderness Society's Too Wild To Drill info packet.
• To learn more about the history of this fight and to hear The Wilderness Society's call to action click here. 

 © Notch Theatre Co. 2021