Ariel Fristoe: Theater as a Civic Commons

What happens when theater stops asking audiences simply to watch and starts inviting communities to listen, speak, and act?

In this conversation, Bill Cleveland talks with Ariel Fristoe, founder and Artistic Director of Out of Hand Theater in Atlanta, about a lifetime spent reclaiming theater’s oldest purpose—not entertainment alone, but civic life. Together they explore how storytelling, conversation, and community partnerships can become practical tools for reducing polarization, strengthening democratic participation, and helping neighbors encounter one another as fellow human beings rather than strangers.

From foster parenting to community organizing, from performances in living rooms to citywide dinners on racial equity, Ariel describes a practice built on a deceptively simple recipe: Art to open hearts. Information to open minds. Conversation to inspire action.

In this episode:

• Why theater originally existed as a civic commons—and why Ariel believes it should become one again.
• The story behind Decatur Dinners, where more than 1,200 strangers gathered in homes across one city for conversations about race.
• Ariel’s vision for a modern “federal theatre project” that would put artists to work helping communities address their most pressing challenges.
• How community conversations created through theater can strengthen civic participation and democratic life.

ART IS CHANGE Episode 184

Notable Mentions

People

• Ariel Fristoe — Founder and Artistic Director of Out of Hand Theater, nationally recognized for developing theater-based civic engagement models that combine performance, dialogue, and community action.
• Bill Cleveland — Host of Art Is Change, artist, researcher, and founder of the Center for the Study of Art & Community.
• Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. — Civil rights leader whose vision of the “Beloved Community” profoundly influences Ariel's work and the mission of Out of Hand Theater.
• Bryan Stevenson — Civil rights attorney, founder of the Equal Justice Initiative, and author of Just Mercy. Ariel references his conviction that hope is the enemy of injustice.
• Malunga Casquelourd — Congolese cultural leader and teaching artist whose work at San Quentin Prison used traditional storytelling, music, and movement to create dialogue across prison factions.
• Nikki Young — Playwright whose work appears in the Decatur Dinners performance excerpt featured in this episode.
• Jesenia Ingram — Atlanta actor performing the excerpt from Nikki Young's play during the Decatur Dinners segment.
• Brian Goldstone — Journalist and anthropologist whose Pulitzer Prize-winning book There Is No Place for Us examines housing insecurity and the working poor in Atlanta.

Organizations & Initiatives

• Out of Hand Theater — Atlanta-based theater company working at the intersection of art, civic engagement, and social justice through performances, community dialogue, and partnerships.
• Community Impact Lab — Out of Hand Theater's national training initiative helping artists, activists, and community leaders develop arts-based civic engagement projects.
• “Equitable Dinners” — Out of Hand's signature model combining a short play, shared meal, facilitated dialogue, and concrete civic action.
• “Shows in Homes” — Long-running initiative bringing professional theater into private homes to spark conversations around difficult community issues.
• “We Hold These Truths” — Out of Hand Theater's America250 initiative using four original plays and community dinners to encourage conversations across political, racial, and cultural differences.
• Center for the Study of Art & Community — Producer of Art Is Change.
• Charles F. Kettering Foundation — Partner through its Democracy and the Arts program.
• National Endowment for the Arts — Federal arts agency supporting public access to the arts, including Out of Hand's America250 initiative.
• The King Center — Atlanta institution dedicated to advancing Dr. King's philosophy of nonviolence.
• The Carter Center — International nonprofit advancing peace, democracy, and public health.
• National Center for Civil and Human Rights — Atlanta museum and educational center exploring links between the U.S. Civil Rights Movement and global human rights.
• United Way of Greater Atlanta — Regional nonprofit working to improve education, housing, and economic mobility.
• Atlanta Regional Commission — Metropolitan planning agency serving the Atlanta region.
• Mixed Blood Theatre — Minneapolis theater company licensing Out of Hand's community dinner model.
• RealTime Arts — Pittsburgh arts organization presenting Out of Hand's civic engagement model.

Events & Projects

• America250 — National commemoration of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, inspiring Out of Hand's “We Hold These Truths” initiative.
• “Decatur Dinners” — Landmark civic arts initiative in which more than 1,200 participants gathered in homes across Decatur for performances and conversations about racial equity.

Publications & Research

• There Is No Place for Us: Working and Homeless in America — Brian Goldstone's Pulitzer Prize-winning investigation into working homelessness in Atlanta.
• International Journal of Arts Management — Peer-reviewed journal publishing Ariel Fristoe's research on Out of Hand Theater's community-centered business model.
• Journal of Arts Management, Law, and Society — Scholarly journal publishing research related to arts management and cultural policy.

American Theatre — National publication covering nonprofit theater, including Out of Hand Theater's America250 initiative.

• “Out of Hand Theater: Monetizing Creativity”— Harvard Business School case study examining Out of Hand Theater's innovative business model.

Places & Institutions

• Martin Luther King Jr. National Historical Park — Historic district where Ariel Fristoe lives and works.
• Hope-Hill Elementary School — Neighborhood school Ariel describes as transforming her understanding of segregation and systemic racism.
• San Quentin Rehabilitation Center — California correctional institution referenced in Bill Cleveland's story about arts-based conflict resolution.
• Boston Children's Theatre — Historic theater where Ariel Fristoe's parents met, beginning the family story that led to Out of Hand Theater.

Ariel Fristoe: Theatre as Civic Commons

This transcription has been lightly edited to enhance readability.

Bill Cleveland

Hey there. What happens when the story on stage belongs to the community?

From the Center for the Study of Art and Community, this is Art Is Change, a chronicle of art and social change where activists, artists and cultural organizers share the strategies and skills they need to thrive as creative community leaders. My name is Bill Cleveland.

This episode is part of a special art action series produced in partnership with the Charles F. Kettering Foundation's Democracy and the Arts program.

In these episodes, we'll be speaking with artists, cultural organizers and arts leaders who are navigating and challenging current efforts to limit free creative expression and free speech.

Together, we'll explore what freedom of expression means in practice, not as an abstract right, but as a lived responsibility at the heart of democratic life.

Now, at a moment when our democracy and the free expression that feeds it is threatened and social divides seem impossible to bridge, this episode's guest, Ariel Fristoew, is showing up with a very different story.

As founder and artistic director of Out of Hand Theater in Atlanta, she's built a practice and a business model around a radical idea: that theaters can be a powerful driver of civic conversation and positive social change, a purpose that is urgently needed right now. Our conversation is rich with hard won insight and genuine surprise.

Ariel will also share her cheerleader philosophy that asserts that no matter how charged the issue or how divided the room, every program must leave people feeling hopeful, connected, and ready to act and how that discipline is now backed by peer reviewed research. And she'll share her vision for a new federal theater project, a concrete plan to scale this model to 50 cities, use it to measurably reduce polarization and put artists to work on their community's most pressing challenges, starting with free training for anyone who wants to try.

Part 1: Fostering Community Conversations

Ariel Fristoe, welcome to Artist Is Change. So tell me, where are you hailing from?

Ariel Fristoe

Bill Cleveland

And I'm on Alameda Island, which is on the unceded homelands of the Chochenyo-speaking Ohlone people, including the Muwekma Ohlone and the confederated villages of Lisjan where, I should say, their stewardship of the shoreline and estuary that surrounds us here continues to this day, which is a piece of our history that I think is a reminder that place really does matter. I'm wondering, does living where you do instill a sense of historic responsibility?

Ariel Fristoe

So I was already in the middle of running this socially-engaged theater company, but when we considered moving here [the question] was, “How do we keep historic residents in their homes? And what does it mean to be White people moving into this neighborhood? And how can we be good neighbors and good citizens?”

So one of the first things we decided to do was to send our birth daughter and then our foster kids to our neighborhood school, which is just a couple of blocks down the street. It's that experience that really changed me, because as, you know, a progressive White American, I sort of thought that I knew something about racism, and I thought I knew something about poverty in America. And then spending a lot of time inside the school, literally on the grounds of the Martin Luther King Center and it's just a couple of miles away from three predominantly White, very wealthy public schools. But this school, Hope Hill Elementary, had over 99% kids living below the poverty line and over 99% black kids. Inside of that school really opened my eyes to what segregation and systemic racism actually look like in this country. And the consequences of was.

Then we decided to devote our work at Out of Hand, not just to working on any community issue or anything that was important to our neighbors, but to really devoting our work to helping to eradicate racism, violence, and poverty, because those are the three evils identified by Dr. King as the barriers to building the beloved community. And this is where we live.

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I have a recipe for everything that I do at Out of Hand, which is art to open hearts, information to open minds, and conversation to inspire action. And our programs always include all three all three arts as necessary components of the recipe, which is important.

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Part 2: Partners in Change

So, this is an invitation to a long story short.

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Ariel Fristoe

And then I come to find out that all of the theater companies outside of the literal square mile of Broadway are nonprofits. And I thought, “Aren't nonprofits supposed to serve their community's greatest needs and most vulnerable members?”. But all of the theater companies around the country — the thing that I love and that I trained for — are in essence making art and entertainment for mostly older, wealthier, white people who could surely afford it anyway. What is this crazy system and why is it that way? So my friends and I, when we were 25 years old, half of my lifetime ago, started this company. And my goal ever since has been to look for ways to make theater as truly valuable and useful to my community as possible.

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Ariel Fristoe

And the reason that I am so committed to that is that it is, I think, very easy for most artists, including me, when I'm thinking as an individual artist, is to get an interesting idea and want to go after it and come up with something that is exciting or interesting artistically. That is not necessarily the thing that would best serve the community partner’s goals. And while that's wonderful, of course artists should do that. That's not what we do. That is not the goal of our work. The goal of our work is always how can we use our tools as artists to best lift up the information, the issues, the goals, the obstacles of our partner organization and inspire people to take the actions that they want attendees to take.

And so I'm really upfront with artists when I'm hiring them with saying, like, if you get a great idea and there's something else you want to do, go do that, but you can't do it under this contract. And that is not to say that the artistic quality isn't important. People often assume that Out of Hand uses amateur artists, that we use community members as the artists because our work is so embedded in community and that's actually not true at all. We always use professional artists, and artistic qual is very important to us, but not for its own sake. Not because artistic value is our goal, but because the effect that the art has on launching a conversation and moving people to care more about an issue and moving people to action is directly affected by the quality of the art. And in fact, you can do more harm than good with bad artistic quality. So the art really matters, but not for its own sake.

Bill Cleveland

So I'm just going to make an editorial comment here. I think what you are is mainstream.

Ariel Fristoe

Ooh, I love it.

Bill Cleveland

I think historically, theater has a little bit more gravity — you know — as a place where vexing social and political and philosophical ideas get parsed, where challenging moral and spiritual questions were examined, where every day human folly was laid bare and laughed at and ridiculed, all in the context of stories and fables and tall tales and larger than life characters and situations that allow the community to listen and reflect and yes, be both entertained and influenced. All of which I think aligns pretty well with what you have been up to. Like I said, that's really honoring the legacy of your discipline in the greatest way possible.

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Part Three: A Moveable Mojo Feast

So you have, as you said, a long history, lots of chapters and partners, all with a pretty constant focus, which is unique. A theater company lasting as long as yours is quite something. If somebody were going to tell the story of Out of Hand, what story would you tell that would do a pretty good job of showing the power and potential of what you're up to?

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Ariel Fristoe

And that night, like we stayed late into the night, and we cooked up this idea for what if we organize a hundred dinners on the same night in this small city of Decatur, a 30,000-people city, with a facilitated conversation about racial equity over a potluck dinner at every table, all in people's homes. Each one launched by the live performance of a ten minute play about the experience of being black in America, or more specifically, indicator. And we'd never done anything like that before. We were used to being in one venue per night, not 100 venues per night.

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Jesenia Ingram

Yet I've seen my white counterparts get jobs with little to no experience. My grandmother used to say the most dangerous kind of racism is the kind most people claim not to seek. I can't help but feel that as nice as it is to have this plaque on your walk of heroes, it feels like a way to absolve some people from doing the actual work for equity and justice by giving them credit for a nice monument on ground that still has rotten roots.

It's this kind of illusion of righteousness that just allows racism to continue to flourish just beneath the surface, while still palpable to all of us who are targets of its venom. This acknowledgement, it might make you feel better. But at the end of the day, what is it doing to change the circumstances that made all of their hard work necessary? What my grandmother said to me is what I'm saying to you now. What are you going to do/

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Out Of Hand Equity Dinner Participants

This is my fourth year to serve as mayor, and I'm going to get involved. There's something truly unique about this, and I've been around here a long time. Okay.

It's the first time I've ever seen this many organizations come together to do anything. The world doesn't necessarily change based on workshops, but the world does change based on relationships and connections and stories.

Don't say, you know, I know white supremacy. Right. Racism exists along with someone else. Yeah, yeah. Like, how are you interacting? What are you saying that keeps it going? The system can be so large that it's hard to turn the ship. If we got one high school, one middle school, we can change that part of it. I want to believe that we don't. Have to live apart to live our best lives.

Sometimes we're looking for that answer, and part of the answer is just taking the risk, going somewhere you're not used to going, taking the mask off, releasing the things in our hearts, and enjoying a fabulous meal while doing it. I thank you.

Ariel Fristoe

We had partnered with the city government, the school system and the housing authority were our main partners. And when we got back in touch with them a year later to say, how are you? And what effects, if any, did this have on this small city?

They said in the year that followed a record number of people participated in their city's strategic planning process. And a record number of people of color both ran for and were elected to public office in Decatur.

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There's the equity of the stories that were shared through theater. There's the equity of the reflections and stories of every dinner guest based on their encounter with that story. Okay.

And then there is the equity of all the relationships that got created among all those people in all those home shows. Serendipitous, Curious, you know. And then there is the equity of their path in the world after the fact. So those are all ripples.

And ripple mapping is a way of literally mapping the often-hidden ecosystems of relationships and influence that result from this kind of work that I think has the potential of becoming a gigantic community resource.

Ariel Fristoe

If you are born into poverty in Atlanta, you only have a 4% chance of escaping it. It's the worst in the country.

And in terms of the equity that you build in doing this work, I had this lovely experience this spring of that when I reached out to the mayor of Atlanta, the CEO of the United Way of Greater Atlanta, which is one of the biggest United Ways in the country, and the CEO of the Atlanta Regional Commission, our big planning unit. And then Brian Goldstone, who just won the Pulitzer Prize for the book There is no Place for Us, which is a book exactly about this issue.

All four of them got back to me right away and said, yes, just collaborating with me, because that is the payoff of having that kind of equity.

Bill Cleveland

You're the opposite of that. Right. One thing I would ask you is, how do you think you did that? You were a little theater, and now you have mojo. How'd you get that?

Ariel Fristoe

And for me, that means I go to a lot of networking events, I do a lot of leadership programs, and I am constantly looking for ways to make friends with the people who have the power to make the decisions. Honestly, if you want to change policy, you have to have the ear of the policymakers. It's sometimes as much as half of my job.

I need to get myself in the room so that I know, what do they need? What are they thinking about it? And how can I support their work through the arts? That's how we get artists to seat at the table.

Bill Cleveland

Part Four: 250th and Beyond

So the real question, I'm sure you are asked all the time, is where's the value proposition here?

And your answer, loud and clear, that's changing hearts and minds connecting to people getting their stories in the world. So speaking of that, the United States of America is in a very interesting moment in its history. And I know that you are applying.

Your skills and your strategies to a particular milestone in that history, which is coming up, the 250th anniversary of our Declaration. Could you talk about what's up with that?

Ariel Fristoe

It's called We Hold these Truths. And the idea is that each of us has a truth that we hold. Our stories are America's story.

And we want to invite people who look, live, or believe differently from each other to have one positive, meaningful interaction around their American experiences over a meal launched by a short play. And we're doing a couple of things that we've never done before. One of them is that we commissioned four playwrights.

So we have four short plays, and hosts can choose any one of them that they want to launch their conversation.

So you, as a host, can launch your conversation commemorating the 250th anniversary of our country with a Native American perspective on the American experience, with a white perspective, with the perspective of someone descended from enslaved people, a black perspective, or with the perspective of A recent immigrant from Latin America.

And the other thing that is different that we haven't done before is that we intentionally reached out to as many suburban counties and mayors as possible.

So I live in a purple state of Georgia, and the conversations that happen in Italy are very different than the conversations that happen in the suburbs and the exurbs and the rest of the state. And so we wanted to make sure this was not just an in-town conversation.

And it has been wonderful to find that a dozen suburban mayors and chairs of county commissions have said yes, have signed on as partners for this project and are hosting events in addition to a number of Atlanta theaters. And nonprofits like the King center and the Carter center and the center for Civil and Human Rights.

And then also a whole bunch of houses of worship have also signed up to host this conversation.

Bill Cleveland

Ariel Fristoe

And that theory of change is behind all of my work, that if I can get people together just to listen to each other in an environment where their hearts and their minds are open in the way that art can do that for you, that then what we do at the end of each one of these dinners is we point people to three doable actions that they can choose from, that they can take within the next month, each of which is suggested by the host.

So that suburban city or county or that nonprofit gets to suggest, here's how you can look up what voting district you're in, or register to vote or volunteer to help other people register to vote or engage in a city's strategic planning process or something that your local community, whatever civic engagement activity your very local community is encouraging and advocating for people to do. That's what we suggest you do and ask you to commit to doing right then before you leave the room.

Bill Cleveland

Ariel Fristoe

And so we're very upfront with all of our artists about that, with the writers, particularly as they're writing. But even then, the directors and actors can put a different spin on it. That that is the job that we are hiring them to do.

Bill Cleveland

Ariel Fristoe

So first, playwrights meet with partner organizations and read and watch whatever they're assigned by the partner. I need you to read these articles and look at this website and watch this documentary or whatever it is. That's the first half of it.

And then the second half of it, which is at least as important as the first, is community listening sessions for each of them, where we work with our partners to help us find out who do we need to talk to, and to organize meetings with those people with our playwright so that they can hear directly from people affected by whatever issue we're talking about in whatever community, geographic or otherwise, that the work is about. We could not do our work without those two kinds of research components.

Bill Cleveland

Everything you've said so far relates directly to this question, which is, “What do you see as the role of creators of artists in America at this time of silencing and cruelty and lawlessness? What is your job? And when this is said and done, if it turns out the way you hope, what have you changed for the better?”

Ariel Fristoe

Bill Cleveland

So if I'm hearing a story and I feel that it sounds real and I didn't know that, or I never looked at it that way, or I had that same experience but I had no idea that those kinds of things went on in those people's lives, then you've crossed a bridge that is literally impossible on the policy front. Using the language of chart and graph, PowerPoint. You've given someone an opportunity to ask, “Do I feel good feeling angry about them?” No. Maybe you gave me an opportunity to get rid of a little bit of that us, them thing and more of a sense of, oh, we have some common ground here.

Ariel Fristoe

Bill Cleveland

Ariel Fristoe

We have so much opportunity in that we have nonprofit theater companies around the country, not to mention all of the dance and music and film and visual arts organizations. There's so much opportunity for artists to do this work. And I think they're going to need some funding to do it. And I think they're going to need some technical assistance. I think they're going to need some training. “Why would I do this? How do I do it? What are the benefits to me and my organization and my community?” And I think I can make that happen. It's going to take a little bit longer, but I think I'm going to crack it. And my vision is something like a new federal theater project.

But I think it could be all kinds of artists employing them to use their tools to work on the most important issues in their communities. And what I have found miraculously for Out of Hand is that this work isn't just a benefit to our community, it's sound business. We have a completely different business model than most theaters in that only 5% of our income comes from ticket sales and yet we are growing super-fast. We're now one of the largest theater companies in Atlanta. We don't have any debt; we win all kinds of awards. This model could really work well for a lot of other organizations. I have academic research on this that I co-authored that's come out in a peer reviewed journal. . . . In the current issue of this journal.

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If you're interested in learning more about the foundation and its Democracy and the Arts program, please visit kettering.org or go to the link in our show notes, which also includes links to the many people, places, events and publications mentioned in this episode. Thanks also to the Art Is Change team. Our theme and soundscape spring forth from the head, heart and hand of the maestro Judy Munson. Our text editing is by Andre Nebbe. Our effects come from freesound.org and our inspiration comes from the ever-present spirit of Mark 2:35. So until next time, stay well, do good and spread the good word.