About Us
EXQUISITE THEATRICAL EXPERIENCES THAT INSPIRE COMPASSION
Mission
Oakland Theater Project’s mission is to create exquisite theatrical experiences to inspire compassion and forge bonds across socio-economic and racial barriers.
Vision
We produce theatrical events that seek to unite disparate groups and unearth the human condition.
We know that the best people to tell Oakland’s dynamic stories are Oakland residents. But a lack of access and opportunity is preventing Oakland artists and theater-goers from high-quality theatrical experiences that tell stories that represent their community, compounding widening economic and racial divisions. We envision a Bay Area where exquisite theater is as accessible to someone who grew up in West Oakland as it is currently to patrons of the arts in the Berkeley Hills: where the stories told are the ones that matter and help to provide healing and celebration to the communities that need it most. To help bring about this vision, Oakland Theater Project grounds itself in a value of radical inclusivity while employing, collaborating, and engaging a powerfully diverse coalition of artists and audience members reflective of the dynamic communities of Oakland.
History
The Oakland Theater Project was founded in 2012 by Michael Socrates Moran, William Hodgson, and Colin Mandlin in Oakland, CA. Formerly named Ubuntu Theater Project, we were founded on the value of Ubuntu, which means “I am because we are” and therein “my humanity is tied to yours.” We seek to explore the ways in which theater can act as a vehicle to reveal and invigorate the latent interconnectedness in humanity and society.
“Ubuntu: I am a person through other people. My humanity is tied to yours.
I am because we are.”
The company began by producing three annual summer theater festivals at site-specific locations throughout the Bay Area from 2013 to 2015. In 2016, we launched our first year-round professional mainstage theatrical season for Oakland and Bay Area audiences. We have produced a meaningful amount of theater for a company of our size (51 unique productions since 2013) and have garnered awards and recognition for the scope, ambition, and artistic rigor of our work. In 2019, we built the Oakland Theater, a 99-seat theater at FLAX Art & Design in Downtown Oakland, to house our mainstage productions, artist training programs, new play workshops, and with precious few theaters in Oakland we are able to offer our space as a critical resource and home for many other artists and theater in Oakland and the East Bay.
