About
Mission
Art2Action creates, develops, produces, and presents original theatre, interdisciplinary performances, artistic interventions, and progressive cultural organizing. We support Black, Indigenous, artists of color, women and queer or trans-identified artists, artists living with disabilities, and creative allies in the creation of contemporary work. We are dedicated to cultural equity and aesthetic innovation, artistic quality and community impact.
Core Values
Art2Action has evolved in many ways over its 13+ years since being incorporated. In 2023, Art2Action completed a strategic plan with The Aspire Group to shape a vision for its next chapter. After a thorough process of brainstorming, clarifying, discussing, challenging, co-writing and selecting, Art2Action board and staff members landed on a set of core value statements that speak to those principles that are meant to serve as the organization’s navigational center.
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Performance is the vehicle. Queerness is the frame. Engagement is the process. Excellence is our commitment. Transformation is the goal.
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Performativity
We are queer, feminist, and anti-racist artists committed to social, cultural, and political justice. We strive to create performances that do something in the world, that perform an action beyond the art itself. We inspire the movement of ideas, and people, from art to action.
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Queerness
We emphasize a nonbinary lens that enables us to see the complexities of issues and people. Queerness uplifts possibility, innovation, and subversive truth-telling. We are bold, unapologetic, and visionary.
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Engagement
Co-creation and collaboration are at the center of our process. We amplify the voices of our communities, and disrupt dominant narratives. We are coalitional and intersectional, sowing new solidarities through creative practice, and building collective power.
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Excellence
We reclaim our aesthetics, and innovate new ones. We define quality as both embodied throughout the creative process, and as expressed in the artistic work. We are committed to elevating the experience of art-making for everyone who participates in it, and everyone who witnesses it.
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Transformation
Impactful aesthetics and community relevance work together to create the conditions for transformational dialogue, and shift how we understand the world. Culture shifts before policy. We believe that change happens on multiple levels, in interconnected ways—from personal transformation, to collective movement, to social change. Our work is localized, but deep. We believe small structural shifts lead to seismic change.
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Whether developing new work, collaborating with community partners, touring, or acting as a presenter, community-based process and meaningful engagement with diverse constituencies is central to all of our residencies, productions and creative projects. As a mission-driven, artist-led organization, we are intentionally designed to increase capacity, extend reach and increase our impact through multi-year partnerships with local partners, national networks, organizers and activists.
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Photo by James Geiger
History & Background
“Art2Action” was first envisioned in 2001, by theatre artist Andrea Assaf, when she began creating original work under that name: “Globalicities” was the first production, at the New York International Fringe Festival in 2003. The organization, Art2Action Inc., was formally incorporated in July 2010, with Founding Board & A2A Collective members: Dora Arreola, Andrea Assaf, Krystal Banzon, Meena Natarajan, and Jo Novelli. Art2Action attained 501(c)3 not-for-profit status in 2011, retroactive to the date of incorporation. Originally incorporated in the state of New York, Art2Action’s main office, operations and programs are currently located in Tampa, FL.