Make Theatre — Make a Difference
The Winter/Summer Institute’s (WSI) applied theatre-making process provides a space for exploration, interaction and collaboration with participants from vastly different cultures and backgrounds. We bring people together to question assumptions, engage in problem-solving dialogue, experiment with biases, promote racial justice, improvise collective ideas and, most importantly, create fabulous theatre.
Our goal is not only to share what we’ve learned and created, but to offer ways for others to devise aesthetically provocative, socially challenging theatre anywhere with anyone in almost any situation. Visit About Us to find out more of what we’ve done and are up to!
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PEPFAR – a crucial early funder of WSI’s work – is under attack by the current administration
WSI’s launch in 2006 was made possible in part by a significant grant from PEPFAR (the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief) as part of its work in Lesotho, where WSI is based. Since its inception in 2003, PEPFAR has invested over $100 billion in the global HIV/AIDS response, saving over 25 million lives, preventing millions of HIV infections, and empowering countries to achieve HIV epidemic control (hiv.gov). But in February of 2025, one of the 70 executive orders signed by Trump was an alarming directive that halted PEPFAR — placing a 90-day freeze on all foreign assistance in alignment with his “America First” doctrine. He notified officials to cease PEPFAR-funded work globally or face consequences. Since then, PEPFAR’s work has continued in a reduced, unstable frame – operating without a finalized long-term reauthorization which creates significant policy uncertainty and dire consequences (The Latest PEPFAR News on Reauthorization and Funding - LegalClarity). The PEFAR Impact Counter on this page is a real-time measure of the ongoing effects of the administration’s actions. WSI supports renewal of PEPAR’s multi-year funding.
Grassroots Leadership and Arts for Social Change Primer features WSI’s work
In late 2022, the International Leadership Association published A Grassroots Leadership and Arts for Social Change Primer, edited by Susan J. Erenrich and Debra DeRuyver. The first chapter of this primer features WSI's work: "The Winter/Summer Institute in Applied Theatre: Creating With the Community" by Katt Lissard, WSI's Artistic Director. You can download the full chapter here.
Coming Spring 2026: WSI’s Collective Narrative
The work on our Collective Narrative of WSI’s collaborative history and the development of our creative process has begun. We’re rethinking and reformulating ways to most effectively tell the story of our on-the-ground community interaction and collaboration, along with behind-the-scenes struggles and reckonings. The Narrative will include the voices of dozens of student participants, rural community members, and faculty facilitators as we attempt to trace our history, process, mistakes, learning, methodology, and theatre-making. The Narrative will also provide supplemental images, scenes, songs, and resources for scholars, practitioners, and communities. Sections will be posted as they are completed.
