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PO Box 50597
Phoenix, AZ 85076
USA

Sojourn Theatre creates Portland-based mainstage productions, national large scale community collaborations, and touring shows, such as the acclaimed Look Away.

The Invitation

THE INVITATION

We invite you to devise a scripted or non-scripted public event that practices democracy the way you and your collaborators dream it could be practiced.

It’s a Town Hall Nation event if it grapples with the questions and situates itself within the three rules set out below.

QUESTIONS

  • What’s a local issue that’s hard to have a safe and productive conversation about?
  • What’s it take to get people with diverse ideologies in a room together?
  • What sort of progress or decision makes a public conversation feel successful?
  • Do you want to perform a script you create that demonstrates your vision, or set up rules and invite your community to have a real conversation?
  • What sort of problem-solving process can help people who disagree make decisions together about issues of governance and local importance?
  • How do you keep difficult conversations safe (though not always comfortable) when people disagree?
  • How can you imagine and perform possibilities without getting stuck demonstrating obstacles?
  • What role do leaders play in successful public conversations?

PARAMETERS

  1. It concerns itself with modeling possibilities for successful public interactions between community members and/or leaders, and does not merely represent the obstacles to such interactions;
  2. It utilizes the Town Hall Nation website to document in some manner the planning and conversations that organizers engaged in as they designed and executed the event;
  3. It documents the actual event in one of the ways set forth on the Town Hall Nation website.

For help brainstorming your event, contact us.

You don’t need to ask for approval.
Your project is your own.

This site will be continuously updated with resources and links, and will connect organizers with each other as the project expands. Through the documentation you share through this website, we will catalogue a variety of strategies for public discourse and the practice of democracy.  We look forward to discovering how your events can build a network of functioning dialogue strategies and in the process help us build the show Town Hall.