Damned Without Vision

Overview

If policing and prisons were the answer to safer, healthier communities, our country would be the safest society that has ever existed in the history of the world. Clearly, it is time to focus our energy and resources on what actually keeps us safe— not on strangers with guns and deathmaking institutions. Damned Without Vision is an effort to begin asking how practically to make these same structures obsolete. When we acquiesce to the caging of members of our community, we strip away each other’s humanity. Stories have the power to reflect that humanity back at us and expose our complicity. Utilizing techniques of Theater of the Oppressed and rooted in principles of Transformative Justice, Damned… empowers audiences to imagine those practical strategies needed to address the root causes of person to person harm and dares us to envision a world beyond prison and policing.

Pay what you can admission

About the Artist

Born from the genesis of Damned Without Vision in Spring of 2024, The Up & Rising Collective is a brand new group of artists working to make theatre that demands the humanity of silenced voices, developing a method of combatting systemic opression through theatre. We are growing and evolving, aiming to build a diverse community network for artists working toward revolutionary change.

Our practice is to refer to and follow the example of individuals impacted by the racialized and gendered violence of the state as the foremost experts on their own stories and needs. We envision a technique for creating art that reflects not only the humanity stripped away from caged members of our communities, but also the practical strategies needed to address the root causes of interpersonal harm. Working within the tradition of transformative justice and abolition, this company is an attempt to beginning figuring out — on an individual level— how to make the carceral system obsolete.

Credits