HISTORY

When Rod Bowen and Deepa Purohit co-founded the Rising Circle Theater Collective in March 2000, they were responding to the lack of stories and roles on stage that represented the multi-cultural and cross-cultural communities in New York City. They and many of their colleagues who are artists of color agreed that there were few opportunities to create their own meaningful projects, to tell stories that reflect their own nuanced and complex experiences and to lead the creative vision of an organization. Rising Circle was started to create, workshop, and perform original work that engaged artists of color from all disciplines in a collective process of creating art for theater.

In just eight years, Rising Circle Theater Collective has grown into a community of artists of color, members, affiliated artists and friends, who participate in all areas from developing projects to producing shows to spearheading the organizational development. At the same time, the community of our audience represents people from all racial/ethnic/economic backgrounds that attend performances and benefits, make donations, and also participate in the artistic process by sharing their stories with us through interviews.

Each member of the collective plays an integral role by contributing their perspective to the creative vision of all projects. The collective is comprised of artists who self-identify as people of color. It is also a diverse group of artists who multi-task in more than one theater discipline, for example, actors who write, writers who direct, dancers who act, etc. and all the artists are involved with aspects of production. The collective is the creative and business force behind all the artistic projects for the group.

To date Rising Circle has produced two original plays, Pulling the Lever (2004) and American Family Project (2007), two showcase evenings and several performance based fundraisers created and performed by members of the company. For each original play project members sought out interviewees, conducted interviews and transcribed the interviews.

Our goal for our projects, which is in direct alignment with our mission, is to present these stories in a way that will maintain a level of complexity that challenges the audience and the artists to think about the stereotypical notions and judgments that we all harbor in some way. Through a collaborative workshop development process, we’ve solicited and will continue to solicit the input of our affiliated artists (primarily artists of color): designers, movement experts, writers, directors, and actors that not only have expertise in their craft, but share our passion for diversity in storytelling. Through this passion, Rising Circle continues to build an artistic home and define its voice in the scope of American theater today.