InSite Waco

InSite is a “creative placemaking” initiative in Waco, Texas. Creative placemaking uses the arts and design as tools for transforming communities, strengthening local identity, and leading social change. Right now we’re focusing on theatre production, but we plan to offer arts education programming for kids and adults, and to get involved in public and pop-up art and other projects! Our motto is "staging stories | provoking change" - we believe that communities grow as we come together and "attend" to the stories of others' lives. 

The theme of our inaugural season is "Grass/Roots." We've picked a season of plays that go: back to English-speaking theatre's roots in Shakespeare, (eventually to be) presented outside on the grass; to the the grassroots of the creative process and our connections with each other as theatre-makers and Wacoans; to the grassy hills of sheep and shepherds in a field outside of Bethlehem; and to the bitter roots of division in a neighborhood. 

Our plays will be presented in different places around downtown Waco, from a brewery to a church to homes...and even a theatre. We base out of Cultivate 7twelve, the arts space in the Downtown Cultural District. 

Here's our schedule:

• July 16-18 - Shakespeare Studio: Love and War at Brotherwell Taproom
• September 21 - 24:10/The Waco Plays at Jubilee Theatre
• October 16-19 - Shakespeare Studio: Music, Magic, and Murder outdoors in the Back Yard at Brotherwell Taproom 
• Mid-December - The Second Shepherds Play at a venue TBA
• January 2020 - The Waco Plays, episode 2 at Jubilee Theatre
• February - Staged readings of A Raisin in the Sun and Clybourne Park at homes in homes in gentrifying areas of Waco
• March - Shakespeare Studio: Law and Order at Brotherwell Taproom
• May - Our first full-length Shakespeare in the Park production!

We will always choose and produce plays and other arts events that relate directly to the needs, issues, and interests of Waco. The opportunity we have in the theatre is too important to waste on stories that do no more than distract us for two hours. Plays have triggered social revolutions. When we connect with each other around the stories of other people - even if they lived 500 years ago or in a neighborhood we'd never visit - the barriers to compassion or denial or recognition can come down and we can do better.