The Race 2020 + The Civility Project

Collaborator with Todd Schenk, Bob Leonard, Taylor Wood, and Diksha Pilania

The Race 2020

The Race 2020, originally developed and created by Sojourn Theatre, is an interactive live-streamed performance that combines spectacle and collaborative conversation to explore communication and leadership. The production blends performance, call and response, question and answer, dance and karaoke into a participatory, highly choreographed and at times improvised exploration.

This productionʼs adaptation is developed and created by Te’Asya Hudson, Keith Patrick McCoy, Diksha Pilania, C. Meranda Flachs-Surmanek, Rachel Weis, and Taylor Wood in collaboration with our ensemble and creative team. The Race 2020 in Southwest Virginia was just one of many iterations of Sojourn Theatre's The Race  performed around the U.S. Learn more about this national partnership here. The Race 2020 in Southwest Virginia was made possible in part by a grant and extensive mentorship from Virginia Tech’s Institute for Creativity, Arts, and Technology.

Read the playbill here for a full list of team members and reflections on our hybrid online/in-person process. You can also listen to an interview about my creative process with Co-Director Taylor Wood. The Race 2020 and its accompanying workshops on civic discourse reached over 300 people. Now, a portion of this team is developing a multimedia event that explores how to build shared capacities to connect across differences called Conversation Cubed.