“Who folks do trust and hold in esteem and look up to for social guidance are the artists and culture bearers– the people in the community who make music, who make Indian suits, who are chefs and culinary artists or poets, spoken word artists, singers.” 

– Asali DeVan Ecclesiastes. 

New Orleans, LA – When I heard that the We Will Dream: New Works Festival was back for its second year, I could hardly contain my excitement. Aligning with the 20-year commemoration of Hurricane Katrina, the festival’s theme of “The Water Remembers” explores water as a vehicle for memory, connection, and cultural legacy. Presented by No Dream Deferred and the André Cailloux Center for Performing Arts and Cultural Justice, “The Overflow” event on March 19, 2025, kicked off the festival with incredibly engaging conversations about culture bearers as first responders and the growing dialogue about the issues with “resilience.” 

The first panel of the night, “Performing New Orleans: Towards New Conversations,” featured British Performance Studies academics Stuart Andrews and Patrick Duggan as they discussed their forthcoming book Performing New Orleans: Rethinking Resilience in Art and Everyday Life with Producing Artistic Director of No Dream Deferred and Founder/Executive Director of the André Cailloux Center for Performing Arts & Cultural Justice, Lauren Turner Hines.

Andrews and Duggan’s research investigates how art practices and processes, arts organizations, and performances of place constitute critical strategic voices in a place, give voice to communities, cultures, and memories, enact creative problem solving, develop novel means of addressing city challenges, and refocus public debates through practice. 

The panel was an insightful reminder of the role of culture bearers as first responders. Duggan cites Sleeves Up NOLA during the 2020 Pandemic Lockdowns as an example. 

“They were not asking people to do things out of their cultural practices,” said Duggan. Sleeves Up NOLA was a means of “encouraging vaccines so New Orleanians could get back cultural practices.”

The panel also addressed “resilience”, a word many New Orleanians are tired of hearing or being referred to as after a series of disasters.

“Resilience is used in problematic and troubling ways,” said Turner Hines. 

That troubling phrase has been an ongoing discourse about New Orleanians and our being forced to be “resilient” after facing more than our fair share of blows. This discourse surrounding New Orleans and our “resiliency”  has gained national recognition, especially after the New Year’s Day attack on Bourbon Street this year, with articles from The New York Times and Time Magazine covering the issue.

Turner Hines also did an incredible job of asking necessary and insightful questions to the authors while calling them in to discuss their position in relation to the space in which they are doing this work. As two white men from the United Kingdom, Andrews and Duggan recognize their status as outsiders in the city who are not experts on all things arts in New Orleans. They fully acknowledge their “outsider perspective”, as Andrews and Duggan put it.

Turning inward, the next panel “Art as First Responder: Co-Designing Place, Memory, and Justice in New Orleans” explored the role of artists as first responders through a conversation with local arts organization leaders: Joycelyn Reynolds (Arts Council New Orleans), Shaddai Livingston (Ashé Cultural Arts Center + Afro-Indigenous Society), Nick Slie (Mondo Bizarro), Alana Harris (Deputy Director of Arts and Culture Mayor LaToya Cantrell), and Lauren Turner Hines (André Cailloux Center). 

The panel began with its participants sharing wonderful memories of when needs were met. It ended with reflections on the future of first responders who are culture bearers and the sustainability of arts organizations. 

“In this moment, I am really emboldened by the spirit of Captain André Cailloux and that I can be of courage in this moment and I can face uphill battles and I win. Even if the win isn’t manifesting in this lifetime, it’s manifesting in future generations to come. Laying the groundwork and laying that foundation down of how you could show up and say it with your whole chest… I look at the work of stewarding this space and this project as a continuation of my artistry and my purpose,” said Turner Hines.

Reflecting on the history and future of arts organizations in New Orleans in our current political climate, many of the panelists are concerned about combatting the dismissive attitude of referring to someone or someplace as “resilient” while also considering the fight to persevere.

“I do struggle with this word ‘first responder’… It’s not so much about revolution and fighting because the rest is revolution… We’re always being a first responder today. It’s like how do you pull back from that? You cannot solve every issue. The housing, the food, how do you pull back and resist the urge to respond to every single problem and every single attack that’s thrown at your community even though you really want to? How to maneuver and navigate that? I have a duty to my community but also to myself. I don’t like to move in the spirit of fear and constant reaction from response,” said Livingston.

Closing out the panel, I expressed my curiosity as a professional grant writer and fundraiser by day.

“I’m curious to know how organizations are pivoting or using language or reapproaching fundraising in this political climate, or are you not changing? Are you resisting? How do you hope to see not resilience but resistance in this new administration and moving forward rather than falling back?”

Panelists like Reynolds, Livingston, and Turner Hines stressed the importance of diversifying revenue streams and working in partnership with other organizations, as no organization should ever rely solely on grants.

“We have so many earned revenue streams that are available to us here, so we’re really digging into that as our path for sustainability and becoming less reliant on grant funding,” said Turner Hines.

While I’m mad you missed The Overflow Kick-Off Event, here’s your chance to not miss the largest festival in the Gulf Coast region dedicated to uplifting new works by Black and African-descendant theatremakers. 

The We Will Dream Festival will take place from March 22 – May 2, 2025. 

Mark your calendar for the following events:

HBCU Theatre Summit

(Supported by the New Orleans Theatre Association)

Dates: Saturday, March 22 – Sunday, March 23, 2025

Hybrid Event: In-person and virtual participation available

Featured Highlight:  Launch of the Drinking Gourd Virtual Learning Community-(Available online from March 22 – April 19, 2025)

A gathering of HBCU students and faculty featuring workshops, networking opportunities, and performances designed to support emerging theatre professionals in their artistic development.

AZÚcAR! New Play Reading Festival – Opening Reception

(Co-hosted by Latinx Theatre Commons)

Date: Thursday, April 3, 2025

Time: 6:00 PM – 8:00 PM

Location: André Cailloux Center, 2541 Bayou Road, New Orleans, LA

A celebratory evening introducing the festival’s dynamic lineup of new plays by Afro-Latinx playwrights.

Featured Production: Wonder Wander – City Park Audio Immersive Experience

Date: Friday, April 4, 2025 –  Sunday, April 13, 2025 (Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays)

Time: 11 AM, 1 PM, and 5 PM

Location: Scout Island in City Park, New Orleans, LA

“Mind the roots, heal the land.”

Wonder Wander City Park is an immersive audio experience and a land and labor acknowledgment in action through storytelling. This devised piece is being created in collaboration with the cast and production team, blending their talents and perspectives to honor the land and its history in a deeply meaningful way. Running April 4–13, 2025, this unique outdoor production explores the vast history of City Park—once a vital portage for Indigenous peoples, later home to plantations, a segregated park, and now a space of celebration and community gathering. Hundreds of years of stories inhabit this land, and Wonder Wander City Park brings them to life through a fusion of live performance and immersive audio, inviting audiences to “connect to the land on which we stand.”

This is history felt, seen, and heard—an experience like no other.

Wonder Wander City Park is brought to life by a dedicated group of creators, performers, and designers, all committed to sharing the rich history and stories of City Park in a way that invites audiences to connect with the land and its past.