OSU’s Be the Street (BTS) was a community-engaged performance project dedicated to creating collaborative spaces with and for community within the Hilltop neighborhood through storytelling.
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- David Feiner’s (of Albany Park Theater Project) Artist Talk
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- BTS’s Youngest Devisor 2019
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- 2019 Performance – STEAM FACTORY
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- Devising at OLGC 2019
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- OLGC Devising 2019
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- A moment in “Vengo De…” 2019
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- “Im Going to Keep Every Year of It” – YMCA 2019
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- Library Group 2018
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- Session at Our Lady of Guadalupe Center 2019
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- Welcome Table – 2019 Performance
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- 2019 Audience
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- Brandy Johnson in “A Cookbook for Us” – Library
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- West High School 2018
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- OLGC Story Circle 2019
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- YMCA Movement Work 2019
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- Tim at Third Way Café
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- Art Making 2019
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- Third Way Cafe 2018
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- Warriors 2018 Performance
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- Jesús Lira in “Vengo De…”
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- Saying “Yes!” with Albany Park Theater Project Residency
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- Movement Work with APTP
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- Warriors 2018
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- “A Cookbook for Us” – Library 2019
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- Session with YMCA 2019
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- Script Creation at the Library 2019 – “A Cookbook for Us”
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- Sahily Tamayo in “Vengo De…” – OLGC 2019
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- YMCA Performance 2018
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- OLGC Performance 2018
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- Audience Engagement 2019 – “Where do you find beauty in your community?”
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- Audience Engagement – “How did you get to Be the Street?”
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- Rehearsal 2018
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- Library 2018
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- OLGC Session 2018
In an era marked by global migration, war refugees, and terrorism, it is more important than ever to understand both how the uprooted, displaced, and re-located find ways to constitute community and how receiving communities constructively incorporate new residents. What are the tensions that human mobility generates? How do constructions of place affect the well-being of uprooted and host communities? How do our policies, institutions, and physical environment as well as our everyday performative strategies impact the lived reality of long-term residents and new arrivals? Who is included and excluded from the process of community formation, and why? What performative phenomena impede community formation? Where in our existing social structure do we find opportunities for performative interaction across difference? How does placemaking at the grassroots level interact with city or state-level initiatives to engineer attractive and welcoming environments?
Be the Street sought to respond to these urgent questions by developing performance work in partnership with local communities in order to reflect upon the making and re-making of place.
Now, in the time of Covid-19, Be the Street has shifted to engaging with and offering leadership workshops (virtually) for the larger Columbus community. Check out our Be the Street in the time of Covid page for more details on this new phase.
The leadership team currently consists of postdoctoral researcher and artistic director Moriah Flagler (Theatre/Comparative Studies) with faculty member Katey Borland (Comparative Studies), Michaela Neild , KJ Dye , Sharon Ware, Crysti Donavan, and Kimberly Cole.
In 2018-2020 the team was lead by postdoctoral researcher and artistic director Moriah Flagler (Theatre/Comparative Studies), faculty members Ana Puga (Theatre/Spanish and Portuguese), Katey Borland (Comparative Studies), and Paloma Martínez-Cruz (Spanish and Portuguese).
For 2016-18, the research team was led by Ana Puga (Theatre/Spanish and Portuguese) with co-investigators Harmony Bench (Dance), Katey Borland (Comparative Studies), Elena Foulis (Spanish and Portuguese), Paloma Martínez-Cruz (Spanish and Portuguese), and Shilarna Stokes (Theatre).
Be the Street is a Humanities and the Arts Discovery Theme Project at The Ohio State University.