Are We Not Strangers?

Script & direction · Participatory performance

Are We Not Strangers? is a participatory performance exploring how strangers encounter and come into relation with one another. Developed with Cleveland Public Theatre as part of Soft Launch 2026, it was framed as a secret gathering in which participants read, exchanged, listened and responded together.

The work creates a temporary community through shared attention and small acts of connection. Audience and participant become overlapping roles, with those present contributing to the performance’s unfolding structure.

Drawing on research into connection, care and third spaces, and principles of legislative theatre, the project tests how performance can support community gathering, representation and collective decision-making. Participation becomes a way of rehearsing cultural democracy: practising how to listen across difference, negotiate experience and exercise civic voice.