I am so proud to be the Artistic Director of Free Street Theater, which has been making experimental theater designed to move across social boundaries since 1969! That's 52 YEARS! That's before I was BORN! I became AD in 2013, and joined a humbling legacy: Free Street was the first racially integrated theater in Chicago. It was one of the first to offer arts programming for youth. It was definitely the first company to move into Cabrini Green to spend months making a musical with the residents there, on the theory that it isn't enough to just make theater ABOUT an issue. It's important to participate, to include the people most affected by an issue, and to acknowledge that we all have things to offer to each other. Today, Free Street follows this simple mission: we make performance by, for, about, with, and in Chicago's diverse communities. Our work is multiracial, multigenerational, and often site-specific. We believe that theater should travel to its audience, not the other way around, and that theater gives us an important opportunity to be together in live space, to talk about urgent social issues in ways that are provocative, funny, and deeply human. "My work" is often "our work," but check out these short documentaries, then and now(ish).