TEAM SUNSHINE HISTORY

Team Sunshine Performance is a Philadelphia-based organization founded in 2010 by Benjamin Camp, Makoto Hirano, and Alex Torra, three artists of different cultural backgrounds with a range of performance expertise (physical theater, contemporary dance, and classical theater), who came together with the intent to create original, ensemble-generated works of experimental yet approachable performances. In operation for over a decade, Team Sunshine has honed an effective brand of collaborative play-making that incorporates wide-ranging aesthetic styles and ideas generated by a collective of performers, directors and designers alike, featuring ensembles ranging from 2-120 actors. Using playful tools of participatory, experimental theater, Team Sunshine’s performance works activate audience-as-community to create a dynamic experience of communal reflection and activation. Each new work builds on Team Sunshine’s rigorous approach to cultivating genre-defying, investigative performance works and events that balance joy with deep investigation, contend with urgent social issues, facilitate critical discourse, and pose creative solutions.

In 2019, Team Sunshine Performance refined its mission to build forward with increased urgency; charging its artists to be better citizens and braver creators by focusing on the intersections of art and activism. The company — led by the three co-founders with the support of two administrative positions — views its full-length performances as flagships of the company’s work, with each project milestone uniquely defined by how directly it speaks to its intended audience. In 2021, Team Sunshine began to develop educational initiatives that serve as an extension of the company work.