ARE WE NOT STRANGERS?
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Are We Not Strangers?
Beta testing at Cleveland Public Theatre’s SoftLaunch Festival
January 15–17, 2026
Will you be present?
A chalk circle, an unmarked door, a basement room of gathering strangers. No stage, just invitations: unwrap this, read that, meet someone’s gaze. You choose how far to step in. Slowly, the room shifts, and you with it. A secret assembly disguised as theatre, practising connection like it’s contraband.
Are We Not Strangers? is a new work of participatory theatre by Naomi Lord, making its first public appearance at SoftLaunch before evolving through a multi-year research trajectory in Cleveland. This beta version is the seed of a larger civic-performance project—one that will grow into community walkshops, verbatim storytelling, site-responsive installations and a major participatory event during Ohio’s Toni Morrison Year.
Join us in the basement. Bring your attention. The rest we’ll make together.
Naomi Lord is a multidisciplinary artist, theatre-maker and cultural strategist creating participatory works in unconventional spaces. With over two decades in socially engaged performance, installation and civic art, she turns shared experience into the artwork itself. Her practice blends research, community collaboration and design to explore connection and collective agency. She works where art meets public life, using creative research and social design to spark new forms of exchange and civic possibility.