A Host of People

A Host of People
Unboxing Care

"Unboxing Care" explores the new ways our ensemble is thinking about how we care for each other and how we can expand that care outward to our communities. We seek to combat our daily exposure to division, mistrust, violence, and emotional exhaustion with thoughtfulness, surprise, and healing.

A Host of People is a Detroit-based ensemble theater ensemble creating original work that celebrates complexity, imagination, and the synthesis of seemingly disparate elements—at once epic and intimate, political and personal, poetic and approachable. AHOP exists to create aesthetically rigorous, intellectually challenging theater that is also warm, welcoming, and inspiring to people from all walks of life. All of our programs move the company in this direction. We choose our subject matter and themes very carefully with an eye to stories, topics, and aesthetic approaches that will be equally thrilling to the most adventurous theater fans as well as those with less exposure to the form.

Since 2014, the company, led by 2018 Kresge Artist Fellows Sherrine Azab and Jake Hooker, has created and produced six original evening-length works, curated/presented multiple installments of two distinct performance series, toured to several U.S. cities, and developed an in-school "arts-forward" educational program that is closely tied to our productions.

We create art around these questions: How can we host more people into theatrical works that are complex and multifarious; work that is poetic, visual, multi-focal, and frees the viewer’s imagination, curiosity, and spirit? We draw from existing literary works, collaged texts, historical figures, social movements, and personal experiences, among other sources. In addition to producing 1-2 shows a year, we curate a series called Performance, Potluck, and Punch that pairs short, living room-sized performances in our home and invites our neighbors in for the price of a dish to share.

We invite audiences into our art as we would guests into our home, whether it is in our house, on the street, in a garden, or in a theater.