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.
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?