Rerooting, or How to Gather Moss as a Rolling Stone
I just got back from a healing retreat at the indescribable utopia of Valley View Hot Springs (if you know, you know). It was transcendent: a return to bliss in my sensory body in a year defined by pain; a reminder of my deep love and gratitude for this land where five generations of my family have lived; a re-rooting into myself, my values, my purpose, my joys.
I lay in a pool, watching algae wander the waterline and sifting pebbles through my palms, and contemplated the koan “the rolling stone gathers no moss” – a sad binary between mobility and responsibility. I loved my nomadic 20s, living out of a backpack across multiple states and foreign countries. And also I was glad to land back here in the place that never stopped being ‘home’ and letting my roots unfurl. So I was overjoyed, watching the flow and shift of water, moss, and stones, to realize that this proverb is bullshit! Or at least not all-inclusive.
Rooting down doesn’t have to bind you into stillness.
Nomadic lifeways don’t have to shed the tethers of responsibility and connection.
We are in a re-rooting phase at Control Group – returning to core practices, reaching deeper into our communal soil to anchor the work we’re creating and supporting. The work isn’t any less nomadic – in fact, we’ve been working on further releasing structural rigidities around programs and planning – number and mixture of projects per year, how we select them and support them. Instead of forcing growth, we’re channeling our energy into organic relationship-building and project development, responsive to evolving situations, tuned in to each work’s ecology (place, community, sustenance, resources). The work is becoming more intuitive, responsive, reciprocal – simultaneously more rooted and more mobile.
George Delaney in Field Trip
2026 will contain our roving multitudes within a rich web of cross-pollinated programming, interweaving joyful healing and resolute resistance across projects with longtime collaborators and new friends, some developed over months and others over years, some arriving at magnificent culminations and others gestating their first delicate blooms. (Stay tuned into our social feeds as we share more about 2026 projects over the coming weeks.)
It’s beautiful to trace the winding trajectory of each project, how it has entangled us and dropped roots into us to feed its growth and finds its glorious way into being. It’s crucial for these projects to develop in a space that doesn’t box projects in, force them to develop through some set formula, with a business-driven focus on volume and efficiency. The standard theatre company model picks four scripts each year, presented at the same venue over the same date ranges. Each project has similar budgets, design teams, even casting, and six weeks of rehearsals to manifest.
I suppose there’s a place for that model, but it definitely isn’t here. Most of our 2026 programming involves projects with multiyear trajectories, deepened through previous iterations, workshops, or phases. Each of them involve unique relationships with project collaborators and lead artists, the projects themselves, and the communities they’re ensconced in – a beautiful, continually evolving constellation of who Control Group is and what we do.
Our Breathing Healing project, in motion since 2021, has entered into the larger Native movement at work in Colorado, with each new relationship sparking new opportunities to participate and be put to work. Next year the Breathing Healing Bus will serve as the literal vehicle for The Truth About 250-150, a statewide truth-telling tour by Native youth leaders Wakáška Yuza.
T. Carliss is using his HOME Studio Residency with us to workshop his song cycle STONO about the largest slave uprising in British North America – a project he’s been working on since 2022, with each residency and sharing it rooting the work deeper into itself, as it patiently develops toward future presentations.
Kenya Fashaw has been dreaming on her upcoming GAP (Guest Artist Producing) project Happy 2B Nappy: Our Hair Story ever since reading the bell hooks book with her young daughter. We’ve spent the past year pairing her creative leadership with our producing guidance as we build toward the world premiere in February 2026.
We initially programmed Parijat Desai’s O Ghostly Ancestor in our 2025 GAP Program, until a major health event upended our plans, and allowed “OGA” to gestate for another year ahead of presentations in New York in December and outdoors in the Denver area next September.
One of the hardest questions for me to face right now is how I want to and am able to make art. Coming out of surgery, a project started percolating, gathering ideas, growing a heartbeat of its own. Each step of early development has felt at best precarious verging on hypothetical, at worst terrifying, but each step has shown me a next step, and without certainty but with much optimism and burgeoning excitement I can say I hope to see you in the woods next March for Red Willow – a ritual of preparation for resistance.
Obviously, nothing is certain, perhaps now more than ever. But deep roots and the ability to shift and move – both these things breed resilience.
Donate today to our 2025 Colorado Gives Day Campaign to help us bring our projects to life!