COMPANY FRESH: NOEL NIGHT
About
In 2023, I co-taught Company Fresh with the Dean of Equity and Diversity at Wayne State University, Dr. Billicia Charnelle Hines. Company Fresh is a first-year devising course of over forty students designed to cultivate collaboration and ensemble creation. The course invites students to generate original performance pieces that draw from their personal experiences and cultural traditions surrounding winter solstice and/or personal connections to cultural celebrations such as Kwanzaa, Christmas, and Hanukkah. These works were presented in the Hillberry Gateway Theatre as part of Detroit’s renowned Noel Night Festival, an annual city-wide celebration of the arts that attracts thousands of attendees. Alongside these performances, I led students in preparing non-denominational holiday music, performed outdoors to engage broader audiences and bring warmth and connection to the winter event.
COMMUNITY CONNECTIONS
In conjunction with Noel Night, Dr. Hines and I extended the project’s reach by bringing several student-devised pieces to an inner-city elementary school in Detroit. This experience allowed our university students to share their artistry with young audiences, many of whom were experiencing live theatre for the first time. For the performers, this outreach reinforced the social value of their craft and the transformative potential of theatre as community engagement. The project exemplifies my pedagogical approach which is rooted in experiential learning, collaboration, and cultural inclusivity, and highlights the role of performance as a vehicle for joy, empathy, and civic connection.