Thank you for being a part of the Hand2Mouth Family!
Hand2Mouth Theatre has been creating original work and providing opportunities for artists to work and thrive for over 20 years. We are an independent theatre company- self producing original works and supporting our free-to-students education programs through grants and independent donations.
Supporting artists is at the heart of our mission. Hand2Mouth invests in equitable wages for all staff, artists, teaching artists, and creators ~ spending half of our budget on artists salaries. This year we need an additional $10,000 in support of our 23/24 Season. Please know, whatever you are able to contribute will go directly to artists working on regional projects and teaching artists working in classrooms.
This season Hand2Mouth produced six original works: Time & Time Again; Closer to Doomsday? No Duh!; Y Recuerda Tichangoshaina… an Encounter of Cultures; HOME/LAND; 24H2M; and Whispers of Freedom: A Night of International Perspectives in Performance. With these works, Hand2Mouth was able to offer 80 creative and technical roles to local Portland artists of diverse backgrounds and experiences. Each show explored our common humanity and offered audiences an opportunity to ponder and discuss themes dealing with the human experience.
Hand2Mouth’s unique creative model is founded on the premise that powerful artistic experiences can exist outside the margins of the established theatrical canon, and that some of the most profound work is created by gathering a community of diverse artists and putting them in a room together to share their unique perspectives - welcoming artists with differing lived experiences to come together in order to generate unique devised work - providing a platform to amplify new voices and perspectives locally, regionally, and globally.
In the next 24 months, 13 teams of U.S. artists will travel to 4 different continents to build countless lasting connections. These teams will collaborate with young artists and their families to create new expressive works which will strengthen the bonds that bring us together as a global community. When our teams share their stories and experiences, suddenly these international communities don't feel quite so far away.
Over these two years, artists and creators H2M has known for decades, those just getting to know us all are connecting with new friends and new co-creators in other cultures. H2M artists are invited into new life adventures, connecting, workshopping, and creative exploration, while we are looking to share the same gift of connection invite in return. The idea that artists are curious, kind, interested and best able to bridge cultures and borders is real, and we get to live it every day to draw our small world into a much larger one.
Since Fall of 2022, the Hand2Mouth Education program has served over 500 students throughout the greater Portland area. At the core of this free arts education program for youth is providing space for youth to recognize strengths, needs, and values in themselves and their communities, an opportunity to recognize diverse thoughts, feelings, and perspectives in an honest and open environment. Throughout this past year we have been able to employ the most amazing and diverse professional teaching artists who bring themselves fully into the classrooms - professionally and personally - in order to create a safe space where students can express themselves and feel fully seen and heard.
Now in its 3rd year, the H2M Youth Devising Residency program is employing 14 teen artists to create an original work of their own. What Brings You Here? is an exploration of a person’s splintered reality as they navigate the continual loop of attempting to apply their mind to the labyrinth of the situations of the world and their place in it.
Or as summarized in a recent workshop: “Attempting to not descend into madness and loneliness.”