Artist Bio

Sojourn Theatre, founded in 1999, is an award-winning ensemble theatre company comprised of 17 artists who live in 7 cities and make performance together around the nation. National/international touring, a body of 26 works, and a reputation for consistent innovation as artists and engagement practitioners has led to: a 2005 Ford Foundation/Americans for the Arts Exemplar Award; being featured regularly at conferences and universities nationwide as a “best practice model” for arts-based civic dialogue; being featured in recent articles in American Theater Magazine and Yale’s Theater Journal; partnerships with non-arts sector organizations such as city and state legislative bodies, social service agencies and cross-disciplinary arts centers around the country. Current projects include a national initiative in multiple US Cities with Catholic Charities USA poverty reduction sites; adapting our project BUILT with Planning Commissions around the country as a tool for Public Engagement; Islands of Milwaukee, a multi-year collaboration engaging public health, public transit and care services for homebound seniors around performance-making and public dialogue culminating in an interactive exhibit at City Hall in Fall 2014; How To End Poverty in 90 Minutes, a devised and participatory performance model for community engagement being staged nationally. The company is led by founding artistic director Michael Rohd who devises, directs  and collaborates on cross-sector projects around the nation; is an Institute Professor at Arizona State University’s Herberger Institute for Design & the Arts; wrote the widely translated book Theatre for Community, Conflict, and Dialogue; and is Lead Artist for Civic Imagination at Center for Performance and Civic Practice.