Who We Are
Forager Theatre Company is an independent nonprofit that builds spirited, joyful, holistic experiences from the objects, spaces, viewpoints, contributions, and people it can gather from any and everywhere.
Founded in 2022, Forager started small by bringing some freaks, geeks, and drama queens together and has since expanded into four organizational branches that provide:
Donation-based education (Take Root).
Safe and productive content development (Unearth).
Diverse one-night experiences (Blossom).
Innovative productions (Harvest).
Our affiliated artists jump from branch to branch, developing new creative skills from germination to bloom and learning how to both take from and give back to their communities. And by practicing egoless transparency with those community members, it encourages our audiences that everybody can be a forager and a Forager.
What We Do
Our commitment to sustainability applies to:
Our artists, prioritizing their creative enrichment and personal wellbeing.
Our productions, gathering physical items and thematic context from the local community.
Our audiences, getting them to come back because they’re interested in how we make things and why they matter.
Forager's organic ground-up approach enables artists from any walk of life to develop novel works or reinvigorate old ones with boldness and imagination. Our staged theatrical pieces, series, and concerts experiment with atmospheric, environmental, aural, photic, and movement-based storytelling, and uplift original projects told by and about queer, underrepresented, gender non-conforming, and femme-presenting artists. And since the pieces of a project are foraged by our artists from their immediate community and experiences, the whole is infused with modern-day values and lived-in authenticity.
Whether it’s an item fished from a street corner furniture pile, an idea posed by a chatty neighbor, a spare room offered by a friend, or a dream relegated to the ‘too ambitious’ script folder, no piece is too little for a forager!
Meet the Team
A word from our Artistic Director
“Forager Theatre Company was started from my desire to change my status quo, rather than change who I am.
Since I was very young, I have craved a community of artists who fulfill not only our individual dreams, but connect and engage with audiences in a sustainable and personal way. I was lucky to have been brought up in community theatre by a mentor who taught me the value of creating works that come from truth and make the most out of what is available both physically and theatrically. My mentor always cast the best actor for the role; she never questioned whether or not they were the correct "type." She reused and repurposed costumes and sets over and over again without losing creativity or function. It taught me much of everything I know today.
When I entered the collegiate and professional worlds, I was disheartened. I was exposed to the casting bias regarding body type, race, experience, you name it, and the wastefulness in the theatre world, of objects, equipment, and people… So when I moved to NYC, I began making connections and finally met my creative partners, Alex Parrish and Iris Rodrigo who shared my beliefs and vision. Together, we formed Forager and add more and more artists, creatives, and collaborators by the day.
I follow the same vision I’ve been developing for the last fifteen years through my work as a director, choreographer, and performer, even back to when I made my first theatre company during high school in Kansas. We push back our inherent bias and against type in casting; we forage from our community to reduce waste and created a lived-in authentic feel to our work; we make the rehearsal and creative process as enjoyable as the final product is for the audience; we tell stories from underrepresented voices that enrichen and challenge us; we dream of a future where we can learn lessons and make beautiful things. Every body belongs on stage and everybody can be a Forager.”