In 2018, the company realized a long-held dream by founding MITU580, a multi-use art space where Theater Mitu can expand its programming and continue to build community through art-making. The opening of this space has ushered in a tremendous period of growth for Theater Mitu as we’ve seen our programming triple, our audiences grow to reach over 8,000 people, and our venue become a home and resource to over 100 artists from around the world each year. This expansion has allowed us to create new programs that further manifest our vision of using theater to build bridges across ideas, cultures, and communities.
Theater Mitu programming includes:
New Work is the bedrock of the company’s artistic practice and the primary vehicle for dialogue with our community. These company created, research driven works of performance wrestle with large socio-political issues and engage audiences in a dialogue around the questions facing our society. Mitu has created over 40 productions as part of its New Work program and continues to develop new projects while touring existing works.
Our Expansion Works program is designed to seed artistic leadership, promote interdisciplinarity, and cultivate new relationships between company members and guest artists through the development and presentation of live performance work at MITU580. These works intersect theater with other disciplines like dance, film, sculpture, musical composition, and interactive technology. Each Expansion Works project is created, produced and presented at MITU580 in conjunction with film screenings, panel discussions, and workshops with visiting artists. The goal of this program is to expand Theater Mitu’s relationship with our local and global community of artists, while pushing the boundaries of live performance for our audiences in Brooklyn.
Theater Mitu is equally committed to sharing our work with local audiences as it is to sharing our resources to support Brooklyn-based, emerging, and established artists who are pushing the boundaries of live performance in the neighborhood. Artists-at-Home is a program created to reduce the burden of the ever-increasing cost of rehearsal and production space for artists in our borough. This program subsidizes the use of both rehearsal and performance space as well as an extensive inventory of equipment at MITU580 for Brooklyn-based artists. An extension of this initiative is our Company Residency program, which provides established ensembles/collectives with developmental space for projects that may require extended time and technological resources to complete.
The Hybrid Arts Lab is a fellowship program for trans, non-binary, and female identifying artists of color working at the intersection of performance and technology. Fellows are provided with mentorship, equipment, resources, and free space to develop, create and present work at MITU580.
Theater Mitu’s education initiatives combine rigorous physical training with deep intellectual investigation to support students in developing a sustainable and disciplined artistic practice. Drawing from a wide range of global performance traditions, and driven by a theory we call WHOLE THEATER, the company challenges artists to investigate, interrogate, and innovate theater and art making. Theater Mitu’s embodied methodology engages the visual, aural, intellectual, emotional and spiritual life of the artist. Our training invites participants to question not only how they make art, but why.
Built on the foundation that great innovations are the result of a cross-cultural migration of ideas, forms, and practices, the company investigates all mediums of global performance to fuel the experimentation and expansion of theatrical form. This research, rooted in the belief that theater is the performative space between a source and a witness, moves beyond the stage to explore some of the world’s most important ritual, spiritual, and artistic traditions. Company members lead curated research teams, focusing on regions and practices as driven and articulated by training needs, production themes, and company methodologies. The result is a vast and varied archive that spans across continents and time, becoming the fuel for the company’s laboratory and creative explorations.