Our Story

The Seeing Place began in August 2009 as a process-driven theatre company for actors and behavioral storytelling inspired by The Group Theatre. Since then, we have produced almost 50 plays in Mannahatta (colonially known as NYC). Our offerings have spanned the gamut from extant and historical stories to devised and original works. 

In all that time, most of what made us special stayed behind closed doors in our rehearsal rooms, where we approached our work as hands-on sociologists and anthropologists excavating human behavior and sociocultural systems together. We used our findings to devise behavioral interpretations of stories inspired by the words of many writers and the world around us. 

Then the pandemic hit and the bottom fell out of the traditional theatre model as innovators in virtual space reimagined the possibilities of performance. We embraced that change. As time went on, the written word has felt less and less relevant to the lives we live as racially diverse, queer, neurodivergent, and disabled performance makers. Inspired by Feminist Theatre, Hip-Hop Pedagogy, and Theatre of the Oppressed, we are leaving the past where it belongs and reimagining our future together.

Augusto Boal spoke of traditional theatre as an oppressive device to pacify the masses and relegate them to living vicariously through onstage characters and teach moral codes decided upon by a playwright. In such a model, the writer tends to be the only meaning-maker with true agency, and the rest of the artists operate in service to that writer. Is it not strange that one person would create cultural meaning for so many others? For both artists and appreciators? We think so.

In today’s world, almost everyone is an artist in some regard. It is the rare person who is not creating or contributing to a poem, a blog, a book, a song, a dance, a drawing, a painting, a garden, a video, a podcast, a play, a show, a series, a movie, you name it. Art participation is at an all time high, and art appreciation is at an all time low. Our world is crying out for p(art)icipation. 

The Seeing Place is now moving in a direction that builds upon the innovation kindled by the pandemic to create live, devised, immersive, interactive, participatory, improvisational stories that explore humanity, problematize social issues, and serve as an anti-racist, anti-oppressive, consent-forward, trauma-informed, and affirming space to imagine reality outside the box of the oppressions we all live in.