YOUR OPTIMISM IS NOT REQUIRED
How can we dream about the future when it feels so heavy?
Your Optimism Is Not Required takes place at an intimate, outdoor performance site encircling a campfire. Guided by two performers, the audience comes to embody characters in the lives of Daughter and Dad: a fictional biracial teenager and her white father on a camping trip confronting futures shaped by climate change.
Inspired by renowned Buddhist ecologist Joanna Macy’s work Active Hope: How To Face the Mess We’re in with Unexpected Resilience and Creative Power, Optimism is an original piece of participatory theater from Team Sunshine Performance that aims to move despair, anxiety, and hopelessness from immobilizing obstacles to animating forces of human connection.
Created by: Alex Torra, Rachel Camp, Jackie Soro, Benjamin Camp, and Makoto Hirano.
Past Presentations
The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI in 2025; A Host of People, Detroit, MI in 2025; Center for the Arts at Kayenta, Ivins, Utah in 2023; The Philadelphia Thing's Trade School Festival at The Village of Arts and Humanities in 2022; Bartram’s Garden in 2021
Center for the Arts at Kayenta in Ivins, Utah. Photo by Alan Holben Photography
Center for the Arts at Kayenta in Ivins, Utah. Photo by Alan Holben Photography
Center for the Arts at Kayenta in Ivins, Utah. Photo by Alan Holben Photography
Center for the Arts at Kayenta in Ivins, Utah. Photo by Alan Holben Photography
Center for the Arts at Kayenta in Ivins, Utah. Photo by Alan Holben Photography
Center for the Arts at Kayenta in Ivins, Utah. Photo by Alan Holben Photography
The Village of Arts and Humanities in Philadelphia, PA. Photo by Johanna Austin, www.AustinArt.org
The Village of Arts and Humanities in Philadelphia, PA. Photo by Johanna Austin, www.AustinArt.org
The Village of Arts and Humanities in Philadelphia, PA. Photo by Johanna Austin, www.AustinArt.org
The Village of Arts and Humanities in Philadelphia, PA. Photo by Johanna Austin, www.AustinArt.org
Bartram's Garden in Philadelphia, PA. Photo by Cait Sumner
Bartram's Garden in Philadelphia, PA. Photo by Cait Sumner
Bartram's Garden in Philadelphia, PA. Photo by Cait Sumner
Bartram's Garden in Philadelphia, PA. Photo by Cait Sumner
Bartram's Garden in Philadelphia, PA. Photo by Cait Sumner
Bartram's Garden in Philadelphia, PA. Photo by Cait Sumner
SPECIAL THANKS AND SUPPORT
Your Optimism Is Not Required was developed, in part, with assistance from the Orchard Project (www.orchardproject.com), Ari Edelson, Artistic Director. Development support for this project was provided through the 2020 Trade School residency, hosted by The Philadelphia Thing, the City of Philadelphia’s Arts in Action initiative managed by the Office of Arts, Culture, and the Creative Economy, as well as Art is Essential: A Project of the Philadelphia Redevelopment Authority’s Fund for Art and Civic Engagement with support from the Knight Foundation. Project support provided by the Charlotte Cushman Foundation, Puffin Foundation, and John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. Support for Team Sunshine Performance provided by the Philadelphia Cultural Fund, Wyncote Foundation, and Independence Foundation.
