Network of Ensemble Theaters

10/07/2026

ON RECORD on Saturday!

These conversations are powerful; we’re bringing the group chat out in the open.

On Record is NET's national conversation series, dedicated to Black women directors, makers, and leaders. This live, public roundtable is facilitated by Lauren Turner Hines, Founding Envisionist and Executive Lead of the André Cailloux Center For Justice + The Performing Arts on historic Bayou Road in New Orleans. This event takes place at BAM House, the Black Arts Movement Business District home that Dr. Ayodele Nzinga (Featured Speaker) built. Livestreamed in partnership with HowlRound, let’s witness what the field will get as a living archive forever. Black women direct, devise, produce, and lead at extraordinary levels, and the ecosystem fails them. Every time. This is NET’s ongoing commitment to a collective reimagining of this systemic failure. On Record puts that gap on the table and asks you what you want on ON RECORD for The Bay.

REGISTER: https://luma.com/networkof-opsm

10/07/2026

AT THE WALL Tomorrow!

There's a wall in Oakland that's been holding it down for two years. Thursday night, the collective holds it up. It stands on 26th Street, painted across a working auto body shop parking lot and in conversation with murals across the street. It’s called SUMUD: Resistance Until Liberation Mural. Sumud is an Arabic word meaning the steadfast will to survive, endure, and remain connected to the land. This incredible multi-org, multi-artist collaboration inspires us to think deeply about Indigenous, Black, and Palestinian liberation as interdependent. As Alive. We knew we wanted to celebrate the stewards, caretakers, and artists of these movements here at this site. About the mural itself, the makers say,

The SUMUD: Resistance Until Liberation mural project is a collaboration between artists and activists in the U.S. and Palestine that explores and confronts the deep interconnections between the brutal systems of imprisonment in the U.S. and Palestine. The mural serves as a demonstration of the Palestinian Liberation Movement’s vibrancy and a memorialization of this historical moment in our struggle globally and locally.

We begin in circles on the concrete, small groups devising and building performances from their own stories underscored by live music from local artists. Circles of grief, belonging, power, and pain bring us together, because solidarity is a thing we make with our bodies in spaces where nothing is meant to grow.

Live music, art shares, street food, vendors. Bring your people, stay for the celebration and the dancing. Learn more about SUMUD: Resistance Until Liberation here (https://www.sumudmuraloakland.org/) and about the Liberation Wall, co-created by our partners Sogorea Te’ Land Trust here (https://www.sumudmuraloakland.org/liberationwall).

Tickets here: https://luma.com/networkof-4hhg

10/06/2026

This week, the Network of Ensemble Theaters is bringing cultural workers, organizers, land stewards, and funders into the same rooms for NET WEEK Bay Area, six days in Huichin and Yelamu, so called Oakland and San Francisco.

The goal is joy, release, and some infrastructure to organize across difference, so the divide between people who make art and people who organize closes in the same street, over the same food.

Waivers are one email away: [email protected]

Full schedule: http://ensembletheaters.net/netweek-bay-area

Check out these public events!

Ground Floor: Move the Knowledge Out

AT THE WALL

ON RECORD

Closing Party: Turn the Music Up

10/05/2026

“We’ve been waiting for someone to organize this.”

That’s the line that landed first at the Federation Table in Chicago this spring. It was a working breakfast of co-op organizers, worker rights advocates, and solidarity economy builders who had all stopped explaining why we need each other, and tomorrow, Tuesday, October 6th we are inviting all in the Bay Area to join us for the next Federation Table Design Session.

We still have a few seats at the table. If you’re building co-ops, organizing labor, holding land, or making work and dreaming about how we take care of each other, request a seat by emailing us or just registering directly here: https://luma.com/networkof-1690 . Lunch is on us. Then stay for Ground Floor, same room, at 7.

Sit with us at Understory Oakland , a worker-owned restaurant in Fruitvale owned by the people cooking. Co-op builders, labor, land and housing organizers, artist collectives, and artmakers will break down what’s working on the ground and design what comes next together.

Join us in building is a national cooperative for cultural workers: pooled benefits, mutual aid, portable healthcare, and shared purchasing.

Our anchor pilot is portable healthcare in partnership with one of the largest labor unions in the US, through a new national co-op local for cultural workers we are building with partners across the country for orgs and freelancers alike. Come for the healthcare, stay for the rights.

El Teatro Campesino made theater on the picket line. We’re bringing the picket line a benefits package.

The Federation Table | Tuesday, October 6 | 12:30 to 4 PM | Understory, 3340 International Blvd, Oakland
Request a seat: link in bio

10/02/2026

04/28/2026

From our friends at

Cooperatives for Creatives [Online]!

Tired of capitalism? Try cooperation! Learn about the fundamentals of cooperatives and how they can help you meet your creative needs.

Who is this workshop for?
The Co-op Curious - Any individual or group that is curious to learn more about cooperatives in theory and in practice.

Community Builders - People who value the things we can do together, that we can’t do alone.

Irrepressable Artists - Artists who have felt the pain of our current economic systems, and know that something better must be out there.

After years of participating in an unjust economy, artists and culture bearers are searching for viable alternatives to the traditional models of cultural production. Cooperatives and the solidarity economy are gaining traction as a values-aligned solution. But what’s the difference between a worker-owned cooperative and a purchasing cooperative? Is an ensemble a cooperative? Is talking about ownership inherently capitalist? In this workshop, participants will learn about the fundamentals that define cooperatives and how they differ from other types of collectives, explore case studies of cooperatives in the arts and culture sector, and brainstorm how a cooperative could meet their needs and the needs of their communities. Participants are welcome to join as individuals or alongside their collaborators, and will receive resources for further study into various cooperative models.

Date: Monday, 5/4/2026

Time: 5:00 PM - 8:00 PM ET

Location: Zoom

REGISTER NOW AT obvious-agency.com

03/26/2026

NETWeek Chicago starts in the body.

Before the conversations about power, before the cooperative infrastructure, before the public record: the body in a room, moving together.

Today. Alice da Cunha ( ) of brings Jacques Lecoq’s “platform” style to in Humboldt Park. Small groups. Tiny space. Epic stories built from your body, your voice, and your imagination.

Mime, dance, music, precision, and a whole lot of fun.

Open to all levels. Wear clothes you can move in.

Physical Theater 101: Big Stories in Small Spaces
Thursday, March 26 | 12-2 PM CT
| Humboldt Park, Chicago
Part of NETWeek Chicago | Code Chicago100 waives the $25 fee

Link in bio.

Isolation is a weapon. Relationship is the resource.

03/25/2026

Let’s move the knowledge out together on 3/27 at GROUND FLOOR.

Three practitioners. Three practices. One room.

Friday at , ( ) brings decades of q***r community-centered performance. ( ) brings ensemble devising rooted in immigrant and working-class communities. SK Kerastes brings the craft of building spaces that hold people in connection, including stewarding Links Hall through its final chapter.
They open up their practice and invite you into theirs. Then the room takes over. That’s how ensemble works. Someone starts. Everyone builds.

Ground Floor | Friday, March 27 | 2-4 PM CT
| Chicago
Part of NETWeek Chicago | Code Chicago100 waives the $25 fee

Link in bio.

Isolation is a weapon. Relationship is the resource.