Festival 2022

The 2022 Live in America Festival gathered artists and thinkers from across America’s distinctive cultural landscape to share and celebrate the power of communities in performance. This festival of live performance and cultural practice featured more than 300 artists from a diverse array of communities: Las Vegas, Nevada; Ciudad Juárez, Mexico-El Paso, Texas border region; Northwest Arkansas; New Orleans, Louisiana; Sumter Co. Alabama; San Juan, Puerto Rico; Detroit, Michigan; the Pueblo, Diné, Hopi, and Apache Nations of Albuquerque, New Mexico, in partnership with Indigenous peoples from across Turtle Island.

From Two-Spirit powwows to queer Carribbean cabarets, from New Orleans bounce music to Detroit blues, from fantastical Vegas light scapes to the layered sounds of Border bridges, Live in America empowers its diverse teams of artists to present art built by their communities, grounded in community practice, and serving community purposes. With these performances and cultural practices, the artists of Live in America ask audiences to consider, connect, and create exchange.

“These communities are all historically places that sing, dance, cook, flourish, and strut in joy-fueled opposition to the political and artistic status quo. In that sense, Live in America asserts, these communities are the avant-garde.” — American Theatre