About Us

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Collaborative art projects that celebrate and address community concerns have come to fruition over the years. These past projects, co-authored and/or directed by Jessica Cerullo,  offer a glimpse into what is possible when communities and individuals choose to harness the power of the arts to communicate meaningfully with one another.

2024

Stonington, CT

In a room filled with maps, at a table beside a window overlooking the shoreline, audiences took cues from performers as they collectively traced their relationship to the history and future of the land. 

The 45-minute auto-teatro premiered at the Stonington Lighthouse as part of the 2024 Stonington Borough Art Walk.

A project by Jessica Cerullo created through a partnership with Historic Stonington, the Alliance for the Mystic River Watershed, and local school children and educators. In collaboration with Phil Stoesz, question-maker and David Schulz, graphic designer.

April 2024

Stonington, CT

Connect to Create collaborated with the La Grua Center for Arts and Culture to create and facilitate a series of spring break arts-based classes to support the creative activity of local high school students. Awarded a grant from the State of Connecticut's Youth Prevention Services, the Power to Create enabled students to explore art-making practices that foster self-expression, emotional understanding, and community connection. 

Opening to the creative power of our senses and expression, we explored ways to engage the creative process in art, the built environment, music, poetry, dance, and theater. We engaged artists in the local community with a visit to the James Merrill House where we met with writer-in-residence Judith Dupré. We made music with West African drummer Matthew Dean, participated in daily somatics and collaborative art-making practices with Jessica Cerullo, and toured the Velvet Mill studios.

photo: Bergin O'Malley

2021-2023

New London County, CT

The Ships in the Night is a living archive project that reclaims and reframes pandemic experiences, asking “what do you want (your community) to remember?” This project addresses the impact of Covid-19 by creating bridges between people of diverse backgrounds in New London County, Connecticut, connecting their shared pandemic experiences, and celebrating their resiliency.

The project manifests as co-authored poems created by Jessica Cerullo through one-on-one interviews with community members, a performance, a public lecture, a community walk, a book, a series of intimate conversations, and a living archive.

Inspired by a line in a Henry Wadsworth Longfellow poem, The Ships in the Night describes what happens when ships unexpectedly pass in the night and shine a light to announce their presence. The project’s goals are to shine a light on pandemic experiences, amplifying voices in New London County, Connecticut that are typically not heard.

This living archive uses collaborative authorship, performance, and engaged transformative listening to create opportunities for deeper community relationships. Its creative manifestations engage participants on affective (emotional), as well as cognitive, and embodied levels.

Audiences and co-authors of the project, are repeatedly invited to participate in the work of re-imagining a future that is ripe with opportunities for connection, creation, and collective meaning-making. Ongoing engagement with the living archive through activation exercises, readings, and re-enactments formulates pathways that enable the stories to circulate through the communities and the individuals and organizations that comprise it.

A project by artist Jessica Cerullo created in collaboration with social choreographer Tia Kramer. Co-author partners include Waterford, Groton, Mystic and Noank, and Stonington Free Libraries; ArtReach; The Lighthouse Disability Support and Services: UCFS Health Care; More Than Words: Inter-High School Diversity Club; OutCT; Trillium Garden Club; Thames Valley Council for Community Action's Senior Volunteer Program; Stonington Historical Society and Literacy Volunteers of Washington County. The publication and event were supported by the town of Stonington ARPA Grants for Arts and Culture. 

May 19, 2022

Stonington Borough, CT

 Community members from New London County, Connecticut gathered at La Grua Arts Center and Stonington Historical Society to collectively embody memory as an act of resistance. Performed in the coastal village of Stonington Borough, the event activated a collection of over sixty poems containing the pandemic memories of neighboring strangers. 

The audience participated by simultaneously reading and then collectively joining their voices in a choral rendition of all the poems. Each audience member carried a poem as they walked together to the Stonington Lighthouse where a repository for the poems was created with the assistance of the Stonington Historical Society. Before parting ways, some poems were shared by the co-authors. 

Performed by Jessica Cerullo and Tia Kramer, the event featured Chloe Kolbenheyer and original music played live by Gary Grundei.Eastern Pequot Tribal Councilor offered a land acknowledgment and blessing.

ACT 1 Four Beacons of Socially Engaged Art

BEACON 1: Social interaction, when conceptually framed, can be art in and of itself

BEACON 2: Socially Engaged Art is co-authored and collaborative

BEACON 3 : Socially Engaged Art is made with and for a very specific audience

BEACON 4: Within Socially Engaged Art, the process is as important as the end product

ACT 2: We Ships

Part 1: Participants walk to the Lighthouse carrying the poems created through The Ships In The Night project.

Part 2: Eastern Pequot Tribal Councilor, La’Tasha Maddox offers a land acknowledgement

Part 3: Installation of the poems in the Stonington Historical Society archive 

Part 4: Socializing in the Lighthouse Gardens as some of the poem co-authors share their poems.

Poems were offered by Nazariah Isaac, Nuriyah Richardson, José O. Rivera, Sydney Schueki, Jill Adams, Alison Taylor, Patrick Sheehan Gaumer and others.

photographs by David Schulz

2020

International

This short film project inspired by the digitization of Michael Chekhov’s lessons and lectures was a collaboration between the University of Windsor, the Michael Chekhov Association (MICHA), and over 40 International theaters, schools, and collectives. It celebrates and interprets selections from the newly established Michael Chekhov digital archive, The Actor is the Theatre while simultaneously revealing the global presence of Chekhov's technique in the 21st century.

Project Ideation: Jessica Cerullo

University of Windsor Librarians: Brian Owens and Peter Zimmerman

Project Editing: Aruna Bhalla

2018

Walla Walla, WA

A dramatic play that embodies questions and experiences of migration that are shaping our nation and the community of Walla Walla, WA—an agricultural community with a thriving wine and food production industry that has relied heavily on migrant labor for decades. We asked our neighbors to share their moments of exclusion and belonging, invisibility and courage. We then invited those interviewees to contribute as collaborators, editors, observers and creators in the theatre-making process. 

The performance was co-authored with 8 students in the Fall 2018 Devised Theatre and Social Practices Course at Whitman College as well as 11 community members and leaders who joined in the process.  

Jessica Cerullo ideation and direction

Tia Kramer ideation, social choreographer

Gary Grundei musical director, composer

Devised in Collaboration with the Cast:

Emma Cooper, Francisco Esquivel, Maddy Gold, Erina Horikawa, Evan Marks, Donovan Olsen, Sabina Rogers, Dani Schlenker, Mira Skladany, Matt Schetina.

Production was comprised of interviews with 10 Walla Walla community members who co-authored this show with us: Amanda, Ana, Fernando, Leon, Luis Mendez, Luna, Mariela Rosas, Paco, Sandy Garcia, Ursula Volwiler.

Costume Design Eliza Van De Rostyne, Scenic Design the Ensemble, Scenic Consultant Nathan Tomsheck, Sound Design and op Evan Marks, Light Design Kevin Walker, Light Board operator Radko Bachvaroff, Stage Hand & Dresser Gaby Chaparro Ceniceros, Stage Manager Grace Sanwald.

Voice Actors were utilized (in some instances) to re-record interview segments: Ynez Vargas, Larry Miller, Carlos Vargas Salgado & Madeline  Gold

Spanish translation: Ynez Vargas & Larry Miller

Hear Here Walla Walla sound designer & technologist Eric John Olson

Learn more about this project and it’s partner project, Hear Here Walla Walla.

2019

Walla Walla, WA

Artists partnered with the Walla Walla Immigrants Rights Coalition (WWIRC) and Whitman College students to interview a diverse and intergenerational group of immigrant community members in Eastern Washington about their lives. Through this research, we learned there is a lack of public record of Mexican-American migration and history in the area. To share these oral histories, we made a public performance and set up a phone line that anyone could call, and listen to excerpts from the interviews or leave messages with their own story. By pressing the numbers on a keypad listeners navigate through the topics of Belonging, Exclusion, Courage, Invisibility, Change, Tradition, Legacy, Sunrise, and the ultimate question—if you knew you would be heard, is there one last thing you would like to say.

Jessica Cerullo, Tia Kramer, and Eric John Olson conceived this project as a means to share stories of Walla Walla community members who, for reasons of anonymity or a lack of platform, had not been heard within the community at large. The project was co-created by the Whitman College Devised Theater course in collaboration with the Walla Walla Immigrant Rights Coalition as well as immigrants in the community. This work was sponsored by the Innovation in Teaching and Learning Fund and the Andrew W Mellon Foundation, diversifying the curriculum through community engagement.  Ultimately the project was installed in the Pacific Northwest Archive. 

Conceived and Ideated with Jessica Cerullo, Tia Kramer & Eric John Olson

Co-Author Interviewees: Amanda, Ana, Fernando, Leon, Luis Mendez, Luna, Mariela Rosas, Paco, Sandy Garcia, Ursula Volwiler

Co-Author Producers: Jessica Cerullo, Emma Cooper, Francisco Esquivel, Maddy Gold, Erina Horikawa, Tia Kramer, Evan Marks, Donovan Olsen, Sabina Rogers, Dani Schlenker, Mira Skladany

Ongoing Artist Production Team:  Walla Walla Immigrant Rights Coalition’s Art and Social Practice Collective: Jessica Cerullo, Francisco Esquivel, Maddy Gold, Erina Horikawa, Tia Kramer, Amara Killen, Alexa Lim, Donovan Olsen, Mira Skladany, and Katy Sassara with the support of the Walla Walla Immigrant Rights Coalition at large.

Voice Actors utilized (in some instances) to re-record interview segments:  Ynez Vargas, Larry Miller, Carlos Vargas Salgado, Maddy Gold

Spanish translation: Ynez Vargas, and Larry Miller

 Web Design: David Schulz

Sound Design & Technologist: Eric John Olson

Musicians: Gary Grundei, Erina Horikawa, and Maddy Gold

The listening booth was designed by David Schulz, Tia Kramer & Jessica Cerullo with core concept work by Eric John Olson & Tia Kramer

2016

Walla Walla, WA

How do you attack the problem of poverty in America, with a lens specifically focused on your community. Over the course of 90 minutes, this performance and community dialogue challenged audiences to listen, explore and ultimately, chose how to spend $1,000 cash from ticket sales to alleviate poverty in Walla Walla county. An experiment in dialogue, collective decision-making, shared responsibility, and the potential for art to help us make our world a better place, the production engaged 24 community partnerships and was the first bilinual production of the play. 

Initially created and produced by Sojourn Theater in Chicago, this production was made at Whitman College, a small liberal arts institution in a rural agricultural community. It received creative and practical support from The Sherwood Trust, the Center for Performance and Civic Practice, and the Sojourn Theater team.  Historical Listening Stations were featured in the pre-show and were written by students in an Intermediate Composition class based upon research in the Whitman College Northwest Archives.

Actors: Natialie Berg, Ben Caldwell, Mary Baker-Fohring, Megan Gleason, Allison Kelly, Maya Kozarsky, Gabriella Luther, Shireen Nori, Nelly Pilares, Anthony Reale, Sabina Rogers, Dani Schlenker, Kenzie Spooner, Noah Wheeler, Ludy de Brito, William Monico, Bryan Semonsen.

Script Writers: Michael Rohd, Jessica Cerullo, Haley Forrester, Ryan Long, Tara McCulloch.Natalie Berg, Gabriella Luther.

Spanish Translators: Nelly Pilares, Carlos Vargas-Salgado, May Baker-Fohring.

Director: Jessica Cerullo

Spanish language prologue directed by Carlos Vargas-Salgado, Facilitation, Instructions Sara Sawicki and Alejandro Tey, Community Outreach Interns: Maricela Sanchez-Garcia, Lauren Wilson, Community Outreach Mentor: Danielle Littman, Scenic Designer: Vanessa Ryan, Technical Advisor: Liam Kaas-Lentz, Properties Design: Jacob O'Connor, Grace Pyles, Sound Designer/Composer: Rick Sims, Graphic Designer: David Schulz, Video Production Design: Jackson Clough, Lighting Design: Sunshine Hays-Wehle, Costume Designer: Lauren Rekhelman, Stage Manager: Sara Staven.

2016

Walla Walla, WA

As the ballots in the 2016 US presidential election were being cast, a group of young artists prepare to open a production of Anne Carson’s adaptation of Antigone. They consider the questions of Sophokles’ time and our own:

How and when do we draw and redraw the lines of loyalty with family and with country?
Who deserves burial and who are we allowed to mourn?
How does the patriarchy respond to a woman’s cries of grief and rage?
How are the first responders in a tragedy cared for?
What is the responsibility of the bystander-citizen?
What does silence have to offer?

In addition to preparing their roles, the actors learned the facilitation strategy - Intergroup Dialogue - a process that strives to create new levels of understanding between members of different socially identified groups. Following the performance, the cast instigated dialogue with audience members who considered the socio political climate of the 2016 election in concert with the production.

Antigonick & Antigonick Act II was created by Renee Archibald and Jessica Cerullo in collaboration with Emily Huntingford, Matt Schetina, Lauren Rekhelman, Roxanne Stathos, Grace Starr, Reid Watson, Cara Casper, Julio Escarce, Alexandra Lewis, John Lyon, Rajesh Narayan, Anthony Reale, Andzu Schaefer, Danielle Schlenker. 

Jessica Cerullo (director), Renee Archibald (choreography), Heather Hamilton (choreography), Nathan Tomsheck (scenic design), Liz Stanton (sound design), James Mapes (light design), Robin Smasne (costume design), Teal Kurnie (stage management), Julia Ireland (philosophy expertise), Dana Burgess (classics scholar), Kisha Schlegel (public witness), M Acuff (public witness).

Production photographs by Missy Gerlac.

2013

Walla Walla, WA

‘Ukulele started as a wish that there could be a radically inclusive theater production. It sought to achieve this by adopting an adaptable rehearsal schedule. It centered joy and valued presence over preparation as core organizing principles. It achieved this in great measure and became a variety show that was “the antidote to the madness.” Non linear, mostly non-verbal, serious, funny, with everyone (on stage and in the audience) feeling “good” when the curtain fell. Not because they escaped but because they returned.” 34 performers representing students at Whitman College and community members in Walla Walla, Washington contributed to the creation of the show and the gifting numerous 'ukuleles in town.

Written by Jessica Cerullo 

with script contributions from Karinne Keithly Syers and Kristen Kosmas

Music Direction: Jon St. Hilaire

Cast: Emily Krause ,Travis Wheeler, Haley Forrester, Erin Kirkpatrick, Gus Thomas, Leah Siegel, Nicky Khor, Susannah Ellis, Emily Huntingford, Evelyn Levine, Mykhanh Pham, Jon St. Hilaire and Samantha Grainger, Ian Becker, Atanas Atanasov, Samantha Grainger, Matthew Fisher,Tom Zbyszewski, Gabriella Luther, Candace Rose, Jenna Carr, Alexander Johnson, Emily Davis Gus Kahn and Richard A. Whiting, Lauren Rekhelman, Joe Stewart, Jenna Carr, Ian Becker, Aaron Do, Erik Feldman, Luke Monroe, Jack Wheeler, Joe Sims, Lyra Dalton

Director: Jessica Cerullo, Assistant Director: Caroline Rensel, Ukulele Ensemble Director: Jon St. Hilaire, Voice & Movement Coach: Sayda Trujillo, SM: Wendy Motulsky Costume Designer: Robin Smasne, Scenic Designer: Devin Petersen, Sound Designer: Melanie Medina, Light Designer: Elliott Sunshine Hays-Wehle, Property Designer: Alexander Johnson, ASM Nate Olson, Andrew Schoenborn, Ass’t Costume Designers: Erin Kirkpatrick, Lauren Rekhelman, Ass’t Property Designer: Jessy Cherry Crew: Delio Fernandez, Russell Sperberg, Haley Gadzik, Samuel Gelband, Carl Garrett, Emily Dotts, Natasha Higbee, Zoe Randol, Sabrina Rodriguez, Sarah Wollett, Eli Zavatsky, Jiayao Zhu.

2006-2010

USA

A traveling play created to shine a light on community-sustained agriculture and to transform the joys, fears and confusions about the political, agricultural, and familial landscapes, into a piece of art. 

Is the tomato a fruit or a vegetable? Why did the tomato appear in the U.S. Supreme Court in 1893? How many slices of pizza does America eat in a second? Where are the tomatoes that taste good? How do we say goodbye to what is lost? And how do we hold on to what is left? In viewing history through the tomato, the audience travels on a journey examining vulnerability, appropriation, identity, consumption, cultivation, and the changing dynamic of food and family in hometowns across the USA.

Developed at Naropa University's MFA in contemporary performance program, the play premiered in NYC at PS 122, Solo Nova with a subsequent tour featuring community engagement events in towns and cities across America.

PS 122 Solo Nova Festival New York, New York, premiere 2007

BAX Brooklyn Arts Exchange, New York

The Garde Arts Center, New London, Connecticut 

The New Alt Theatre, Buffalo, New York 2008

Florida International University, Miami, Florida 

Northwestern State University, Natchitoches, Louisiana

The Culinary Institute of America, Hyde Park, New York

Walking the Dog Theater at the Basilica Hudson, New York

Tin Shop, Breckenridge, Colorado

International Michael Chekhov Festival. Amherst College, Massachusetts

Walla Walla Farmer’s Market, Walla Walla, Washington

Williams College, Williamstown, Massachusetts

Paul Mellon Arts Center, Wallingford, Connecticut

Boulder Fringe Festival, Boulder, Colorado

Bazaar Productions Berkshire Fringe Festival, Great Barrington, Massachusetts

Written and Performed by: Jessica Cerullo

Collaborators: Ashley Hughes, Liz Stanton, Kate Fioravanti, John Capalbo, Annie Lanzilllotto, Meghan Callahan, Ragnar Freidank, Claire Larsen, Nina Rolle, Liz Bigger, Benedicta Bertau, Eddie Allen, Joan Bruemmer, Asli Ayata, Sara Katzoff. Columbia County Bounty, The Small Revolution Expo, Grassroots Gardens Buffalo.