Town Hall, a collaboratively created performance event being developed by Portland-based Sojourn Theater and NYC’s The TEAM, responds to a desperate situation in our country — the dearth of opportunities for ideologically diverse people to make democracy function together. Town Hall will combine fictional narratives drawn from research into the worlds of public discourse, public policy, local governance, and Congressional debate with participatory strategies developed from classic and original models of civic dialogue methodology. Research and development will take place in Iowa, Kansas City, Virginia, Washington DC, and New York.
Town Hall Nation: A National Act of Civic Imagination is the national engagement component of the Town Hall project. Imagining America campuses and communities are invited to create and perform 30-minute theatrical, imagined, ideal versions of fictional healthy, functional town hall meetings. Some presentations will be live-streamed and others archived, serving as raw material for Sojourn’s production Town Hall and as a visible set of grassroots strategies for democratic practice.
Each Town Hall will explore questions including: How do you want members of your community to speak with each other? How do you want them to engage with elected leaders? How do you want leaders to respond to their constituents? What would make you feel like your time was well spent? What would make you feel like democracy was functioning in practice?
