Jess and Flying Leap at the 2023 TYA/USA Festival

Jess co-presented a workshop with Susanna Brock and Ana Cantorán Viramontes at this year’s TYA/USA festival and conference in Tempe, AZ, to a full house of over 30 participants! The festival featured panels, workshops, works in progress sharings, and performances from across the country. Jess, Susanna, and Ana got to learn, be inspired, and reconnect with friends far and near at the first post-COVID in person conference from TYA/USA.

In their session, “Expansive Access and the Outdoors in Theater for the Very Young”, the trio asked: What strategies can we use to create a more radically accessible and inclusive Theater for the Very Young performance? What opportunities can we find to expand our consideration of what access means?

In the interactive, hands on workshop, participants got insights from the development of The Garden, exploring four aspects of accessibility that were at the center of the work: intergenerational access, language inclusion, multi-sensory play, and jazz structure as dramaturgy. Then, everyone dove in and did some collaborative devising, playing with these tools, building tangible action steps and resources for making their ongoing projects more inclusive and bring new audiences to their work!