Co-Creating a Community. Take a Step with Us.
In 1996, eight ensembles came together to create the Network of Ensemble Theaters (NET). We’ve gained continuous momentum in the decades since, growing exponentially as a national non-profit arts service organization to connect geographically dispersed performing arts ensembles and give them a collective identity.
As we celebrate our 25th anniversary, NET continues to be an instrumental force in defining, organizing, and nurturing the national ensemble arts movement.
NET's membership is a vibrant, engaged community of ensemble companies, affiliated organizational allies, individual artists, practitioners, educators, and students with a shared commitment to collaborative creation, and belief in the amplified strength of joining together for collective action and mutual support.
NET’s programs and services center ensemble values and advance ensemble practice by encouraging reciprocity, long-term relationship building, collaboration, and community resource and knowledge sharing. Highlights of this work include:
- granting over $1 million to our members to support artist-to-artist exchange, peer-based learning, and creative exploration
- hosting 25+ national and regional convenings throughout the country, including: Amherst, MA; Asheville, NC; Atlanta, GA; Blue Lake, CA; Chicago, IL; Detroit, MI; Fayette, ME; Harlan County, KY; Knoxville, TN; Los Angeles, CA; Minneapolis, MN; New Orleans, LA; New York City, NY; Oahu HI; Philadelphia, PA; San Francisco, CA; Seattle, WA; and Tempe/Tucson, AZ;
- offering regular online and in person events, such as artist-focused professional development sessions and community town halls;
- and continuing to speak out and advocate for the ensemble arts field.
This is all just one step toward NET’s mission to propel ensemble theater practice to the forefront of culture and society.
As the national performing arts sector navigates its post-COVID reopening, it is wrestling with long overdue calls to address embedded systemic inequities. Ensembles’ collective structures and practices may prove a vital resource, offering alternative, artist-centered, co-leadership models that can support equitable power sharing and more just and humane ways of working, and group processes that engage multiple voices and perspectives as valued co-creators.
Take your place in this movement.
Support ensemble artists. Be part of this work.
