When Art Meets Advocacy
The relationship between theatre and social activism has always been complex, fraught with questions about effectiveness, appropriateness, and aesthetics. Can a play actually change political realities? Does incorporating advocacy into theatrical work compromise artistic integrity? How can theatre address urgent global issues without devolving into propaganda or heavy-handed messaging? Ground UP Productions’ multi-year development of TREATY: A Play About How to NOT Blow Up the Planet offers a compelling case study in how contemporary theatre can engage seriously with activist goals while maintaining the emotional depth and theatrical vitality that makes audiences want to show up in the first place.
TREATY addresses nuclear disarmament, specifically engaging with the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, an international agreement that prohibits signatories from developing, testing, producing, acquiring, possessing, stockpiling, or using nuclear weapons. The treaty was adopted by the United Nations in 2017 and entered into force in 2021, representing a significant shift in international approaches to nuclear weapons. However, none of the world’s nine nuclear-armed states have signed the treaty, and awareness of its existence remains limited among general publics in most countries.
This gap between the treaty’s formal existence and its practical impact creates both a challenge and an opportunity for theatrical engagement. Unlike historical events that have clear narratives and outcomes, the treaty represents an ongoing political struggle with uncertain results. It exists in that difficult territory of aspirational policy, meaningful in its articulation of values and goals but not yet effective in changing material realities. Making theatre about such a subject requires finding the human stories within abstract policy debates and creating dramatic tension around events whose outcomes remain genuinely unknown.
Ground UP Productions began developing TREATY in 2024 through an intensive workshop process during its New Works Festival. The play, written by playwright Chris Thorpe, was developed in close collaboration with him throughout the process. Any changes or refinements to the script were made with Thorpe actively engaged, ensuring the integrity of the original work remained intact while allowing the piece to evolve through performance and discussion.
This extended development process reflects Ground UP’s commitment to getting the work right rather than rushing to production. Issue-driven theatre faces particular risks: if the political message overwhelms the human story, audiences feel lectured rather than engaged; if the theatrical elements dominate without sufficient engagement with the actual issues, the work feels superficial or exploitative of serious subjects. Finding the balance requires time, experimentation, and willingness to revise substantially based on what discoveries emerge during workshops and readings.
Ground UP has worked in alignment with the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, known as ICAN, the coalition of organizations that was awarded the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize for its work to draw attention to the humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons and to achieve the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. This partnership allows the theatre company to ensure accuracy in how they represent the treaty and the broader disarmament movement while also connecting the theatrical work to ongoing advocacy efforts.
This relationship between arts organization and advocacy organization represents an increasingly common model for socially engaged theatre. Rather than artists working in isolation to interpret political issues, partnerships with actual advocacy organizations can provide research support, fact-checking, connections to affected communities, and pathways for audiences to take action after experiencing the work. These partnerships also help advocacy organizations reach audiences they might not otherwise encounter, as many theatre-goers are not actively engaged with particular political movements but may be moved to learn more and get involved after seeing a compelling production.
Ground UP’s educational outreach programming, which has been a pillar of the company’s work since 2007, takes on particular significance in connection with TREATY. The company has developed workshops, residencies, and student engagement initiatives connected to the play, bringing the issues of nuclear disarmament and international cooperation into schools and community organizations. This outreach extends the reach and impact of the theatrical work beyond the audiences who attend actual performances, using the play as a jumping-off point for broader conversations about global security, activism, and civic engagement.
The 2025 GoFundMe campaign launched by Ground UP Productions specifically supports the continued development of TREATY including outreach to schools and institutions in New England, the South East, including The University of Chapel Hill, and the expansion of educational outreach programming. This crowdfunding approach allows the company to engage supporters directly, building a community of invested stakeholders who feel ownership over the project’s success. The campaign supports workshops, readings, and community engagement initiatives, including outreach to schools and institutions in New England, deliberately broadening access beyond traditional theatre-going demographics.
Bringing Theatre Beyond New York
The planned full productions of TREATY scheduled for late 2025 and early 2026 mark a significant expansion of Ground UP Productions’ geographical reach. While the company has primarily operated in New York City’s Off-Broadway ecosystem since its founding in 2005, TREATY will be performed at Sandwich Town Hall in New Hampshire starting in December 2025 and as a co-production with The Town Hall Theater of Middlebury, Vermont, from March 2026. This regional strategy recognizes that conversations about nuclear disarmament need to happen across the country, not just in coastal cultural centers.
Taking theatre out of New York City presents both opportunities and challenges. On one hand, regional productions can reach audiences who rarely or never attend Off-Broadway theatre, democratizing access to professionally developed new work. Town hall settings and community theatres often foster different relationships between performers and audiences than traditional theatrical venues, with more informal atmospheres that can encourage post-show discussions and community engagement. For a play explicitly designed to raise awareness and inspire action, these community-oriented venues may actually be more effective than traditional theatrical spaces.
On the other hand, producing theatre outside major urban centers requires solving logistical challenges around casting, technical resources, and marketing. Regional productions often work with smaller budgets and may not have access to the depth of acting talent available in New York. Technical capabilities at town halls and small community theatres may be more limited than Off-Broadway venues, potentially requiring the production to be designed with touring flexibility in mind. Marketing to dispersed rural and small-town populations works differently than marketing in dense urban environments where potential audience members pass by theatre district posters and can easily add a show to an evening already planned in the city.
Ground UP’s choice to co-produce with established regional venues like The Town Hall Theater of Middlebury demonstrates smart partnership strategy. Rather than attempting to present the work entirely independently in unfamiliar markets, partnering with local organizations provides built-in audience bases, community knowledge, and operational infrastructure. These partnerships also create opportunities for skill and resource sharing, with Ground UP bringing expertise in new play development while local partners contribute understanding of their communities and contexts.
The regional production strategy for TREATY also aligns with broader trends in American theatre, where companies increasingly recognize that concentrating cultural production in a handful of major cities leaves vast portions of the country underserved. While New York, Chicago, and a few other cities have dense theatrical ecosystems with hundreds of companies and productions, many regions have limited access to professional theatre, particularly new work addressing contemporary issues. By bringing TREATY to New Hampshire and Vermont, Ground UP contributes to more geographically distributed cultural production and helps build audiences for challenging, politically engaged theatre outside traditional strongholds.
The thematic content of TREATY may resonate particularly strongly in New England communities. The region has a history of town hall meetings and civic engagement, cultural traditions that emphasize direct democracy and community discussion of important issues. New Hampshire’s famous presidential primary and Vermont’s progressive political culture create environments where political discussion and debate are normalized parts of community life. A play about international treaty negotiations and grassroots activism may find receptive audiences in these contexts, where civic engagement is valued and where people take seriously their responsibilities as informed citizens.
The Unique Power of Theatre to Address Global Crisis
Choosing to make theatre about nuclear disarmament in the 2020s might seem either quixotic or prescient, depending on one’s perspective. Nuclear weapons have faded from the forefront of public consciousness since the end of the Cold War, even as the actual dangers they pose remain unchanged or have even increased with the proliferation of nuclear-capable states and the deterioration of arms control agreements. Climate change, pandemics, economic inequality, and other crises compete for public attention and activist energy. Why focus on nuclear weapons now?
The answer lies partly in the specific political moment of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, which represents a genuine shift in international approaches to nuclear arsenals and creates opportunities for public education and movement building. But the choice also reflects something particular to theatre’s capabilities as an art form. Unlike documentaries or journalism, which excel at conveying information, or visual arts, which can capture attention through arresting images, theatre specializes in embodied human experience over time. A play can make audiences feel the stakes of nuclear disarmament by showing characters whose lives are affected by these weapons and these policy debates.
Theatre also creates unique conditions for collective experience and discussion. Unlike film, which audiences typically consume in silence before dispersing, or books, which are read in solitude, theatre brings people together in shared space to witness a live performance. This communal dimension makes theatre particularly suited to addressing issues that require collective action. After experiencing TREATY together, audience members can discuss what they’ve seen, share reactions, and potentially organize responses. Post-show discussions, talkbacks with artists and advocates, and connection to local activist organizations can channel the emotional and intellectual energy generated by the performance into concrete action.
The development process for TREATY, with its workshops, readings, and community conversations, also models the kind of collaborative, inclusive approach that effective activism requires. Just as successful social movements build power by bringing together diverse constituencies and creating space for multiple voices and perspectives, Ground UP’s development process has involved playwrights, directors, actors, dramaturgs, advocates, and community members in ongoing conversation about how to tell this story effectively. This collaborative spirit embedded in the creative process mirrors the collaborative spirit necessary for addressing global challenges like nuclear proliferation.
Ground UP Productions’ work on TREATY also contributes to a broader tradition of activist theatre that includes companies like the San Francisco Mime Troupe, El Teatro Campesino, the Living Theatre, and many others who have used performance as a tool for social change. While tactics and aesthetics have evolved over decades, the core belief remains constant: that theatre can do more than entertain, that it can educate, challenge, and inspire audiences to see the world differently and to act on that transformed vision.
However, activist theatre also faces persistent challenges and criticisms. Skeptics argue that theatre preaches to the converted, that audiences for political plays are already sympathetic to the views being expressed, making the work feel like self-congratulatory reinforcement rather than genuine persuasion or consciousness-raising. Others contend that theatre’s impact is impossible to measure, that the warm feelings and good intentions generated by a performance rarely translate into sustained activism or concrete political change. Still others worry that yoking theatre to political goals compromises artistic freedom and aesthetic experimentation, reducing complex art to simplistic messaging.
Ground UP’s approach to TREATY seems designed to address at least some of these concerns. By focusing on character-driven storytelling rather than didactic speeches, the play aims to engage audiences emotionally and intellectually rather than simply delivering information. By developing the work over multiple years with extensive feedback and revision, the creative team works to ensure the theatrical elements are genuinely compelling rather than mere vehicles for political content. By partnering with ICAN and incorporating educational outreach, the company creates structures that can channel audience interest into concrete engagement beyond simply attending the performance.
The full productions scheduled for New Hampshire and Vermont will provide crucial tests of whether this approach succeeds. Unlike developmental workshops and readings, which attract self-selected audiences of theatre enthusiasts and industry professionals predisposed to support new work, full productions in community settings will encounter more diverse audiences with varying levels of prior knowledge and interest in both theatre and nuclear disarmament. The work will need to succeed simultaneously as theatrical experience and educational tool, entertaining enough to hold attention while substantive enough to convey meaningful information about the treaty and the broader issues at stake.
Ground UP Productions’ commitment to TREATY, sustained across multiple years and involving significant resource investment, demonstrates genuine belief in theatre’s capacity to address urgent global issues. Whether that belief proves justified will depend partly on factors outside the company’s control, including broader political developments around nuclear weapons and shifting public attention to various global crises. But it will also depend on the quality of the theatrical work itself, on whether the play successfully creates the emotional connections and intellectual provocations that can move audiences from passive consumption to active engagement. In attempting this difficult balance, Ground UP contributes to ongoing conversations about what socially engaged art can and should do, and about how artists can responsibly use their platforms to address the defining challenges of our time.
