That Uppity Theatre Company
Current Projects
Dance the Vote
This non-partisan project teams dance and spoken word around the history of voting, especially regarding women, people of color, immigrants and people with disabilities with voter registration in public and digital spaces. Its purpose is to promote artistic involvement, awareness and registration in both local and national elections. The project moved to the Missouri History Museum for the 2018 midterms, attracting an audience of 1100 and a proclamation from the mayor declaring it Voter Registration Day in the city of St. Louis. The project went virtual in 2020 with 10 episodes of commissioned work with a special emphasis on choreographers of color, and began several graphic and video campaigns, expanding onto Twitter, Instagram and YouTube.
We ❤️ Immigrants
Lipkin, who is the producing artistic director, said Playback NOW! St. Louis, a project of That Uppity Theatre Company, shared facts about immigration and profiles of famous immigrants, and re-enacted the stories of several immigrants living in St. Louis to a sold out and diverse crowd.
The Publication Project
In honor of our anniversary, we are engaged in a multi-year project to publish the work from some of our many programs including The DisAbility Project, The Briefs Festival of Short LGBTQ+ Plays, and Artistic Director Joan Lipkin’s plays.
Climate Action Theatre
This international project is held every two years during the UN Conference of the Parties meeting on Climate Change. In 2017, Uppity co-directed a series of readings of plays from the collection, and in 2019, Artistic Director Joan Lipkin was one of the 50 commissioned playwrights, with her work performed worldwide as part of the performance series. Uppity co-produced the St. Louis 2019 readings with St. Louis University in the new Mark Wilson Studio Theatre. In 2021, we dramaturged a dance theatre piece on environmental racism performed at the Grandel theatre and taped for virtual sharing.
DisAbility Project
Founded in 1995 with occupational therapist Fran Cohen, it is one of the earliest theatre ensembles of people with disabilities in the country. The project has performed for over 100,000 audience members. Their work is included in the permanent collection of the Missouri History Museum and featured in the regular programming of the St. Louis Art Museum and other area institutions, corporations, schools, and social service agencies. As part of the 25th anniversary celebrations, work is underway on an anthology of collected work scheduled for publication in 2022.
Playback NOW!
Playback Now!, a project of That Uppity Theatre Company, helps to tell the stories of immigrants of the St. Louis area and the wider region. Playback Theatre is a highly specialized form of improvisation that was created by Jonathan Fox and Jo Salas in the 1970s, in an effort to encourage individuals from all walks of society to let their stories be heard.
