AGAINST THE CURRENT. TO THE SOURCE.
Upstream Performance Collaborative is a scrappy, Barrymore Award–winning theatre company dedicated to boundary-breaking new works by emerging and underrepresented artists.
We were founded by award-winning, multidisciplinary artist Rayne in 2019.
We create vital theatre that rejects norms, champions play, and interrogates truth—
Against the current.
To the source.
Pictured: Quinton J. Alexander as "X" in The White Feather Project.
Rowan Quincy Davis Photography
Pictured: Rayne.
Wandering Eye Photography
Pictured: Quinton J. Alexander as "X" in The White Feather Project.
Rowan Quincy Davis Photography
Pictured: Ryan Rebel as "VideoBlobby" and Taylor Cawley as "theelvencat" in WHISPER. Screenshots from performance.
Pictured: Rayne as "Sarah" in COMET.
Gregory Bissell Photography
The inaugural production was The White Feather Project. Funded by the Inclusive Community Grant at Ursinus College, this radical ethnographic devised-play responded to a racially-charged hate crime committed at the institution. Despite administrative efforts to close the show, The White Feather Project sold-out its on-campus performance and successfully remounted at the Shoe Box Short Theatre Festival at Venice Island Performing Arts Center the same year.
WHISPER was Upstream’s second show, co-produced with Shoe Box Theatre Collective. An experiment in improv, scripted text, and technology, WHISPER tackled themes of online community, mental-health, and suicide awareness. It was performed to a live, unsuspecting audience via Twitch and garnered rave reviews during and after its premiere at Director’s Gathering DG Jam 2020.
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