This Is A Front produces socially-minded work. We aim to connect people to the world around them. As our mission highlights, we do this through both theatre and what we call “social moments.”
The theatre we produce tends to explore systems, through the lenses of the individual, cultural iconography, and/or social groups.
We are also invested in building solidarity in our community through social moments. We have events that engage politics head-on through advocacy and education, and we also design programming that is explicitly about meeting each other where we’re at and strengthening our ties.
Our Beginning:
This Is A Front officially launched in October 2023, but our roots go back one year earlier, to late 2022.
A group of us began gathering in Los Angeles to make work together, first around a fully staged production of Lucas Hnath’s A Public Reading of an Unproduced Screenplay about the Death of Walt Disney. In order to raise funds for the project, we hosted a holiday cabaret called Walt’s Winter Fundraising Cabaret. We followed this up with a production of Jackie at the 2023 Hollywood Fringe, and a similar accompanying cabaret, A Springtime Affair.
These early cabarets quickly became about more than first expected; they weren’t just fundraisers, they were ways to organize around a production, invite community, and create momentum around the work.
We then began planning a Halloween cabaret in 2023, A Macabre Cabaret, but with no upcoming show to raise money for, we realized these events didn’t always need to be a means to an end; maybe the event itself was the point — to build space centered around shared values and the need for community.
So we made a company. One that doesn't just make theatre, but makes space for artists, audiences, and acknowledging the blurred lines between them.
For all intents and purposes, these early events are proudly considered the beginning works of This Is A Front.