This coming February, a number of National Theater Project artists will be participating in ArtsEmerson’s The Next Thing Festival (TNT). TNT is “a 10-day, high energy tour of contemporary performance.” There is a lot wrapped up in that tagline. The festival includes live performances, film, live-streamed performance, and workshops. The NTP artists that are participating (although not all with NTP projects) are The Debate Society (workshop/performance), Universes (workshop/performance), Los Angeles Poverty Department (workshop), Double Edge Theater (workshop), Mondo Bizarro (workshop), City Council Meeting (live stream), and Young Jean Lee (film). Take a look at the full  calendar of events.

The TNT workshops are open to the public. Each of the three workshops will include a discussion exploring the process and methodologies for devising new work. Companies will present their work and explain their unique approach to the creative process. The NTP artists that will be participating in the workshops, The Debate Society, Double Edge Theater, Los Angeles Poverty Department, Mondo Bizarro, and Universes, are all great examples of how very different creation methods bring excellent theater into being. In fact, all NTP projects are examples of this…but there would have to be a month-long festival to include all of our projects!

Among the evening performances are two NTP projects: The Debate Society’s Blood Play, and a live-streamed performance of City Council Meeting, a collaborative performance devised between Aaron Landsman, Mallory Catlett, Jim Findlay - and the audience attending the performance.

I hope you’ll join the National Theater Project and the Center for the Theater Commons, ArtsEmerson for this exciting, new festival.  See you there!