Lessons from the Theater: Consensus Organizing
Arts Program Director Damian Woetzel and Deputy Artistic Director of DC’s Arena Stage, Seema Sueko opened the afternoon with a conversation on Consensus Organizing before turning the room over to Sueko who led participants in a workshop of the dynamic practice. Participants also watched Arena Stage actors Hal Linden and Maboud Ebrahimzadeh perform a scene from the upcoming production of Arthur Miller’s The Price.
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Consensus Organizing for Theater (CO) is an artistic process that deliberately optimizes the art we produce to develop tangible and deep relationships with new audiences. In this methodology, a theatre builds stake in multiple and diverse pockets of communities and those communities build stake back in the art work by surfacing and organizing around mutual self-interests. Social justice is at the core of the CO process along with the question, “What do you really want?