As the art world considers the different ways that artists can be supported now and into the future, it can also be helpful to look to the past for successful models.

Et Alia is planning a very unusual kind of theater performance. On March 13, they will be presenting a performance with no rehearsals, no director, and a script sealed in an envelope for one actor. “White Rabbit Red Rabbit,” written by Iranian playwright Nassim Soleimanpour, was initially born out of his inability to leave Iran. He needed a play that could travel without him. Since it first premiered in 2011, it has been widely translated and performed.

When schools were going remote and the live theater world came to a sudden halt, it felt like the end of the world. But it was also the catalyst for new ways to imagine theater art and arts education.

When Andre Joseph was one of the few students of color at his private high school in Staten Island, he experienced bullying from other students and witnessed the way that administrators chose to protect the school’s reputation rather than its students. The experience stuck with him. With his short film “Dismissal Time,” he is telling a story based loosely on his own, in the hopes that it will resonate with people who are dealing with similar issues.

Elaine Del Valle has been telling her own Brooklyn coming-of-age story, “Brownsville Bred” for theater-goers and young readers. Now she’s ready to tell it on the big screen as a feature film.

One of the best parts of working with so many artists and arts organizations is that we get to meet a lot of fascinating people.

Leonie Bell’s theater project was born in 2020 and named after a woman she saw on television who was identified simply as “Local Grandma. This LOCAL GRANDMA, located in Brooklyn, is a “theater project devoted to rigorous play, communal care-taking, and causing a ruckus. LOCAL GRANDMA produces live performances and seeks out genre-, medium-, and culture-bending collaborations.”

Rachel Karp, Sarah Gabrielli, and Jen McGinty all found lesbian bars to be important spaces to them as they came into their own as queer adults. As Rachel puts it, it was “safe and validating and thrilling all at the same time.”

Marcus Henderson is a new father with all of the attendant responsibilities, hopes, and dreams for his family. He wants to take care of his family, make sure that they get the right kinds of opportunities, and do his part to honor those that came before him. A few months ago, Henderson stepped up to take the role of the New York City Father of the House of LaBeija, which has over fifty members across generations. The House of LaBeija is a ballroom house full of queer, BIPOC members who compete in balls in competitions like voguing, share their lives together, and support one another when they face challenges.

It’s hard for emerging, ambitious, experimental artists to book their first shows in a competitive arts environment like New York City. The founders of Brooklyn-based Exponential Festival have been working since 2016 to change that. Founder and Artistic Director Theresa Buchheister and Producing Director Nic Adams, along with the rest of the Exponential Festival team, are gearing up for an ambitious multi-venue, multi-artist extravaganza in January with a crowdfunding campaign that ends on November 3.