Have you ever wondered what it would be like to live in a co-op with other couples or families? Join Hand2Mouth for a thought-provoking performance and discussion of intentional communities.

Hand2Mouth (H2M) is a theatre company devoted to creating new theatre that asks pressing questions of our region and our time. On December 17 at Sisters Public Library, the company will host a free community conversation and work in progress performance of their latest show, Psychic Utopia. This performance explores the human impulse to seek new ways of life through experiments in group living and asks what insights these experiments provide into ways we practice community in everyday life.

H2M creates theatre by combining research with originally-created material to bring Oregon voices to the stage. Psychic Utopia focuses on the open skies and dense forests of rural Oregon and the region’s draw for the myriad groups that built intentional communities here in the last 50 years. Interviews with residents will inform the development of a script about a group of fictional characters who left their normal lives behind to create utopia. The project combines real-life details and performer-created fictions to explore the human impulse to seek greater fulfillment in western landscapes.

Psychic Utopia will be researched and performed by Hand2Mouth company members and guests led by H2M artistic director Jonathan Walters and script writing by H2M resident playwright and two- time Oregon Book Award winner Andrea Stolowitz. The production is made with support from The Miller Foundation, The Templeton Foundation, and The Oregon Cultural Trust and will be shaped through engagements with communities across the state.