CURRENT As 2013 begins, we are at work: preparing to present a workshop production of our two-years-in-the-making collaboration with NYC's THE TEAM of WAITING FOR YOU on the corner of (...) at Kansas City Rep; developing an 18-month national artists-in-residency project with Catholic Charities USA which will have us touring regional and national poverty reduction gatherings giving workshops and performances;

• continuing to adapt the now-award-winning civic-planning game structure we developed for our 2008 show BUILT to be used as a Public Engagement tool with planning commissions and government agencies contacting us from around the US;
  
  
• building a new project with our Milwaukee partners that considers public transportation and home-care for homebound seniors as sites for a modern re-telling of Robinson Crusoe called SHIPWRECKED;
  
  
• planning our 2013 Summer Institutes which will take place in Washington DC, San Francisco and Honolulu;
  
  
• starting work on a new companion piece/sequel to 7 GREAT LOVES ten years after its premiere that will result in a new sort of site-based/touring work.
  
  
• adapting the game structure we developed for our 2008 show BUILT with the New River Valley Planning Commission in Southwestern Virginia to be used as Public Engagement tool in 5 mostly rural Counties;
  
  
• developing a new project with our Milwaukee partners that considers public transportation and home-care as site(s) for a modern re-telling of Robinson Crusoe called Shipwrecked.

MISSION/HISTORY

Led by Michael Rohd and based in Portland, Oregon, Sojourn Theatre's ensemble of 13 core artists makes new theatre around the country. Our work is a rigorous practice that blends metaphor with public reality to bring strangers together amidst experiences where the ethical possibilities of imagination are placed alongside the communal muscle of responsibility. National/international touring, a body of 24 major works over the last 12 years, and a reputation for consistent innovation as artists and engagement practitioners has led to our work being featured regularly at conferences and universities nationwide as a "best practice model" for arts-based civic dialogue.

In 2005, Sojourn was one of only 12 National Exemplar Organizations selected by the Ford Foundation/Americans for the Arts as "important and vital incubators of emerging artists' work, sites of artistic experimentation and innovation, and leaders in community and civic engagement." Our unique, often site-based and frequently participatory approach has led to acclaimed productions engaging issues as diverse as democracy and war (THE WAR PROJECT: 9 ACTS OF DETERMINATION), public education (WITNESS OUR SCHOOLS, toured 32 towns/cities in 32 weeks), business ethics/personal responsibility (GOOD, created and staged in an operating Subaru dealership), demographic change/civic planning (BUILT, created and staged in a high-rise condominium realty demo-space) and contemporary urban/rural conversations in the United States (ON THE TABLE, staged in a church, a barn, school buses and a riverside parking lot). Presenters/partners/hosts have included Della'Arte in California, The Town of Molalla Oregon, The National Touring Anne Frank Exhibit, The Connecticut State Legislature, Georgetown University, Duke University, The Pacific Edge Festival in Australia, Kansas City Repertory Theater, The Orchard Project in NY, Americans for the Arts, Independent Sector, Catholic Charities USA, National Federation of State Humanities Councils, Animating Democracy, TCG, and the Network of Ensemble Theaters.