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December 2023

“Fire also gave us the most transformative gift. Theater. Fire gave us theater. People getting together, around one central point, for story telling.
To build a family.”
-Prometheus, by Montserrat Mendez, in Portal Magic Consensus Time

What does it mean for theatre to build a family? For us, it’s rooted in a process Creative Partner Jason Tseng named “creative kin-making.” Creative kin-making means investing in long-term collaborative relationships. It means disrupting exploitative systems to forge collective ways of sharing power. And it means expanding how we define theatre through an aesthetic of liberation, in which every artistic choice makes us more free. In 2023, we significantly grew our practice of creative kin-making. Can you help us build on this momentum with an end-of-year tax deductible donation?

In January 2023, we held the first of over twenty Core Work gatherings, where we develop plays, creative projects, and community. Led by Creative Partners Sienna Gonzalez and Corinna Schulenburg, Core Work has developed nearly 60 new works since relaunching in September 2022.

In February, Flux held our second Party Soft, our virtual gathering of care and ease. Party Soft was co-created by Creative Partners Heather Cohn, Lori Elizabeth Parquet, Corinna Schulenburg, and Isaiah Tanenbaum, along with Rebecca Ana Peña and Salma Zohdi. As one participant shared, “Party Soft was a creative oasis where I felt artistically inspired and connected to a caring community. There isn’t an ounce of pretension, only a steadfast dedication for communal care and individual introspection through a wide variety of artistic exercises.”

In March, we launched our Season of Experiments, and over the next few months, began developing artistic experiments like the Sharing Power podcast, the Portal Project, and an immersive version of Our Options Have Changed. That development culminated in a July workshop of Our Options Have Changed where lead artists and Creative Partners Corey Allen, Emily Hartford, and Will Lowry explored  the balance between narrative story-telling, in-world puzzles, and immersive exploration. The cast included Rachael Hip-Flores and many other CPs and Flux collaborators reprising their roles from the hotline and expanding the OOHC universe.

In August, we were thrilled to convene so many of our closest collaborators for our Annual Retreat at Little Pond. We spent a week creating new work, cooking for each other (coordinated by Kia Rogers), and strategic planning. Those conversations yielded breakthroughs in our creative kin-making practice—including our new SEED Process and inFlux program, as well as three new Creative Partners, Neo Cihi, Anna Rahn, and Chris Wight. Between them, they have more than ten full productions and almost thirty totals years of working within our community. We’re thrilled to welcome their artistry, care, vision, and joy to our partnership!

The Retreat also gave us an opportunity to develop Corey’s Polly, directed by Heather, and engaging CPs Anna, Chris, Sienna, and Alisha Spielmann in the process. Our continued development of this visceral and poetically dazzling play will lead to a public workshop in 2024.

We ended our 2023 strong by launching the Sharing Power podcast, co-hosted by CPs Corinna, Lori, and Jason, and featuring guests like the Park Slope Food Coop and Groundwater Arts. Give it a listen! And in December, we shared a work-in-progress staged reading of the Portal Project’s Portal Magic Consensus Time. This act of pandemic healing and consensus practice was co-created with Heather, Sarah Elizabeth Grace, Fiona Hansen, Miranda Holliday, Montserrat, Emily Rondon, Corinna, Jason, Isaiah, and Justin Woo, and we expect to continue work in 2024.

Indeed, 2024 will see the continued development and fruition of many of these projects, from more episodes of Sharing Power to plays developed by Core Work to a full production (announced soon). We’re so grateful to be in community with you, and we can’t wait to be more connected to you all in the New Year. Because amid the ongoing pandemic, accelerating climate crisis, and rising fascism, the need for liberating art, new models of power-sharing, and collective care will only grow, and we need to grow along with it. That’s why we’re asking for your support.

For 17 years and counting, we’ve been building a creative home—and making creative kin—together. We’ve developed hundreds of new plays and staged beloved productions like Sans Merci, Once Upon a Bride There Was a Forest, Rizing, and The Lesser Seductions of History. Above all, we’ve developed a community that’s kept us strong through the very worst of times. As we prepare for another year of telling stories—and new ways of telling them—can you help us keep that community strong?

In joy and emergence,

Flux Theatre Ensemble Creative Partners

Flux acknowledges and is grateful for the funding and support we receive from the following current institutional funders.

Flux acknowledges and is grateful for the funding and support we have received from the following past institutional funders.