Many Hands (holding a container for collective Becoming)

Fundamentally, we can’t really say who we are or what we’re doing.

At any given moment we are working diligently and with great specificity to create potent new works, guided by clear visions expressed through strong voices, manifesting as exquisite, entirely singular experiences for and with our audiences. We aim to implement detailed 3-to-5-year strategic plans, developed with nuanced attention to our situation and trajectory, grounded in clear and carefully considered values.

George Delaney, Carro Sharkey, and Elle Hong in Strange Natures; Photo by Katie Day Weisberger

But at its core, Control Group has never been just one thing, or even the same thing from one year or one project to the next. (You know, we contain multitudes and all that…)

One of our Control Group’s founding principles is an all-boats-rising reciprocity. We wanted to create a space for work far outside of mainstream performance, and it couldn’t succeed, thrive, and sustain if we it was just us doing it, off in our corner alone, without a community of artists, works, and audiences growing with us. 

Our twin programs – collaborative In-House Creations and community-wide Artist Services Programming – are designed to elevate many voices, to resource and support a community of artists interested in working together to work differently. We understand this community in dynamic rings and constellations, projects coalescing artists and then audiences, a balance of long-term anchors and fleeting shooting stars. Control Group has only ever been its shifting community of people, their visions and values and intentions-into-actions, each of us imprinting on each other and the evolving whole, a complex continual process of becoming.

This makes Control Group a living, breathing, growing entity. It carries the imprints of all the people who’ve moved through the organization, becoming more multitudinous with each next project. It stretches to accommodate each new vision and set of needs that its artists introduce into its elastic container, accumulating experience, knowledge, resources, relationships, and through all this growing the capacities of the container. And it adopts the values of the people and their work together, learning how to do its multitudinous self better and better, in deeper connection with itself.

Cuauhtemoczin by Diego Florez-Arroyo; Photo by Carro Sharkey

I can’t catalogue the impact of every incredible artist who has ever graced Control Group’s stages, studios, warehouses, slaughter houses, industrial wastelands, and open spaces; but to highlight a few core values we’ve learned from our cumulative self:

From our founding, we have invested in rich reciprocity and mutual commitments – creating opportunities for our artists to thrive within our shared work and within their individuals goals and needs.

Candess Giyan, Joan Bruemmer, and Sarah Leversee helped instigate our first forays into resource-sharing and mutual aid that continue to ground our Artist Services Program.

Carro Sharkey, Kate Speer, Alicia Young, George Delaney, and others have defined how we invite new people into this container inclusively and equitably.

Cinnamon Kills First, Leah Podzimek, and others have crystallized values around how we build relationship with our communities.

Nicholas Caputo, Diego Florez-Arroyo, and Kat Gurley each called in the resilience and determination of the warrior ethos into our shared labor.

Terri Bissonette, alongside a host of recent and current collaborators, has brought clarity to decisions about what lines we hold, when we flex, and where we infiltrate and subvert in service of our values.

Kristine Whittle has consistently called the Land into our work and our values, relearning connective reciprocities with the world around us. I’m excited for T. Carliss’s understanding of animist forces and voices to take us deeper into this communion.

Hallie Bauernschmidt, Bailey Harper, Todd Bilsborough, Kat Gurley, Irene Joyce, Christine Woods, James Brunt, Danielle Dugas, and many other extraordinary collaborators have consistently centered us in the intrinsic value of our work together: the vision, craft, and practice of creating art.

My point here (in case it’s not fully clear) is: this isn’t about me, it’s me fulfilling my responsibility to all of you. As I often tell guests after a show: “I can’t take responsibility for what you just experienced; but it’s partly my fault it happened.”

This is why we’ve spent the last month diligently (eloquently?) asking for your support. This is us calling in the help we need to support a host of important projects by extraordinary artists across 2026. This is our commitment to you; we hope you’ll commit to supporting us.