Work in Progress Showings Co-Presented by The Philadelphia Thing's Trade School & The Village of Arts and Humanities
June 2022 and Bartram’s Garden in 2021

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 Without Going Crazy, 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.
Workshop performances of OPTIMISM were co-presented by The Philadelphia Thing's Trade School at The Village of Arts and Humanities in 2022, and Bartram’s Garden in 2021.

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Created by: Alex Torra, Rachel Camp, Jackie Soro, Benjamin Camp, and Makoto Hirano.
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​First Showings presented September 30 - October 5, 2021

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, 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. This performance is part of the City of Philadelphia’s Arts in Action initiative managed by the Office of Arts, Culture and the Creative Economy. Support provided by the Philadelphia Cultural Fund, Puffin Foundation, and John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.
Support for Team Sunshine Performance Corporation provided by the Philadelphia Cultural Fund, Wyncote Foundation, and Independence Foundation."