Theatre Horizon Goes to Town with Collaborative, Community Centered Play

Many theater companies talk about creating work that engages their surrounding communities, but Theatre Horizon shows the possibilities that can occur when the rubber meets the road. The Norristown-based producer, a fixture of the Montgomery County arts scene since its founding in 2005, opens the 2022-2023 season with Town, a hybrid of theatrical performance and social practice created collaboratively with local artists and community members.

Theatre Horizon received a grant from The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage in October 2020 to craft the play, which will have its world premiere on the lawn of the Eisenhower Science and Technology Leadership Academy from Sept. 15-18.

Thornton Wilder’s legendary, Pulitzer Prize-winning Our Town will serve as the blueprint for the new script, which will examine the realities of small-town America and community life in the present day. Where Wilder’s play promoted a portrait of a homogenous closed society, TOWN strives to celebrate the organic diversity of America’s suburban communities as a vibrant melting pot of cultures and identities.

Artistic director, Nell Bang-Jensen, will helm the piece, in collaboration with playwright Michael John Garcés and the Philadelphia-based musical collective ILL DOOTS. Marisol Rosa-Shapiro serves as Theatre Horizon’s community coordinator, and Gilberto Vega will act as dramaturg.

Reading at Theatre Horizon Story Circle at Theatre Horizon

ILL DOOTS performs at Haya Ground: A Norristown Open Mic

"We are thrilled to receive support from The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage for this exciting project,” said Bang-Jensen. “Building on the practices and aesthetics of The Public Theater’s Public Works program, and the 30-year legacy of Cornerstone Theatre Company, Town will offer an original performance that is both rooted in community and commensurate with the high bar of artistic rigor set by its lead artists and Theatre Horizon."

Theatre Horizon will be holding open auditions for participation in Town, with no previous acting experience required. Interested participants will be asked to introduce themselves and describe the sort of role they could envision for themselves within the structure of the piece. All individuals aged 5 years or older are welcome to audition. The final cast for the play is expected to include approximately 35 people, including professional actors from the Greater Philadelphia region and community members alike.

Since its inception, Theatre Horizon has striven to create works that represent the heterogeneous makeup of the Norristown community, and to serve as an anchor for the arts in Montgomery County. In 2012, the company successfully opened its 123-seat permanent home in Norristown’s Arts Hill District, which has welcomed upwards of 40,000 patrons for live performances in the ensuing decade. With performances of Town not only engaging community members but occurring in a highly visible, centrally located public commons, the company hopes to further extend its presence in the greater Norristown community.