Sarah K. Chalmers

Civic Ensemble welcomes Julia Taylor as the new Executive Director, and launches the new Artistic Ensemble, a group of actors, directors, educators, and administrators who will steer the artistic vision of the company into the next chapter.

According to WENY, Civic Ensemble held a goodbye party on Sunday for co-founder Sarah K. Chalmers, and introduced their new Executive Director Julia Taylor. 

Civic Ensemble's ReEntry Theatre Program will be presenting a recording of their performance of Streets Like This, which was originally scheduled for ten performances in mid-March, and was shut down by the COVID-19 pandemic. The current production is a remount of the 2018 production of Streets Like This.

Civic Ensemble's ReEntry Theatre Program brings back their 2018 production, Streets Like This, with a ten performance run opening Thursday, March 12 and running through March 22 at The Cherry Artspace, in Ithaca, NY. Streets Like This is a full-length play written collaboratively by Thom Dunn and A.C. Sidle with members of the ReEntry Theatre Program. Material comes from the real lives and imaginations of participants of the program.

Civic Ensemble Artistic Director and co-founder Godfrey L. Simmons, Jr. has announced that he will be stepping down from his position at Civic Ensemble, an ensemble-based, community driven theater company founded in 2012. After seven years with Civic Ensemble, Simmons will depart in December to become Artistic Director of HartBeat Ensemble in Hartford, CT. HartBeat is one of Hartford's most important cultural institutions, dedicated to creating provocative theater that connects to the community beyond the traditional barriers of class, race, geography and gender.

HartBeat Ensemble announced today that actor, producer, director and playwright Godfrey L. Simmons, Jr. will be the 18-year-old company's new artistic director. 

Civic Ensemble will be hosting a free monthly gathering on the First Monday of each month, beginning October 1, 2018 at the Lehman Alternative Community School, 111 Chestnut Street in Ithaca from 6pm-8:30pm. Titled Community Soup: Storytelling Toward the Beloved Community, the evening will consist of a free meal and time to chat informally, followed by structured story circles facilitated by Civic Ensemble artists.

Civic Ensemble completes this year's Civic Acts repertory with a World Premiere of Saviana Stanescu's Bee Trapped Inside The Window opening tonight at 8:30pm at the Black Box Theatre @ LACS, 111 Chestnut Street, Ithaca NY. Stanescu's play, a Civic Commission, is a meditation on loneliness, identity and complicity that examines modern day domestic slavery's impact on the lives of three ethnically diverse women in the leafy suburbs of Connecticut. The production, directed by the actor/director Vernice P. Miller (All God's Chillun Got Wings), features Janilya Baizack, Sarah K. Chalmers (Slashes of Light), and Erin Lockett.

Civic Acts: New Plays Toward The Beloved Community is Civic Ensemble's new play festival in Ithaca featuring new political plays by nationally and internationally renowned playwrights whose work centers on women and people of color. These plays deal with the challenges our communities face in moving society toward what Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. called The Beloved Community. Civic Acts is one of the rare new play festivals in the United States devoted to socially-engaged theatre. The Beloved Community, first articulated by early 20th-century philosophers Josiah Royce and Randolph Bourne, is a vision where people of diverse racial, ethnic, educational, class, gender, sexual orientation backgrounds/identities seek to realize justice within the community and in the broader world.

Civic Ensemble's ReEntry Theatre Program presents their third production with Streets Like This, a full-length play written collaboratively by Thom Dunn and AC Sidle with members of ReEntry Theatre Program. Material comes from the real lives and imaginations of participants of the program. The play was created in weekly sessions over the past year and in rehearsals this spring. Sarah K. Chalmers, who facilitates the entire program and leads the sessions, directs this production, supported by assistant director Gabriella Carr, who is also producing this show.

The ReEntry Theatre Program of Civic Ensemble will now be meeting weekly on Mondays from 9am to 11am at Tompkins County Day Reporting starting October 16th, 2017.

This fall, Civic Ensemble and Cornell University's Department of Performing and Media Arts continue their partnership with a new version of PMA's Theatre and Social Change course. The course teaches students how to use theatre to initiate dialogue and change around a vital issue of our times. This semester, that issue is climate change here in Tompkins County and the greater Finger Lakes area.

Civic Ensemble presents The Class Divide which observes the traditional mainstream public school education system through the lens of six high school students, their parents, and faculty, as they approach graduation day. The play begins on the high school seniors' special day and looks back on seminal moments of their education that has shaped their various imminent and rather uncertain futures.

Civic Ensemble, in partnership with the Cornell University Department of Performing and Media Arts, presents Kirsten Greenidge's Baltimore, a contemporary play about racism on a college campus.

To celebrate the 100th Anniversary of New York State signing of woman's suffrage into law, three years before the US passed the 19th Amendment, Hangar Theatre, Kitchen Theatre Company, Civic Ensemble and Cherry Arts are collaborating on a two-night theater event: Four Plays - 100 Years. Performances will be at Kitchen Theatre Company on Tuesday and Wednesday, May 16 and 17 at 7:30pm.

This spring Civic Ensemble joins The Cherry, Cornell University's Department of Performing and Media Arts, Hangar Theatre, and Kitchen Theatre Company to bring three provocative new productions to Ithaca audiences.

Civic Ensemble will remount their production of MY CHILDREN! MY AFRICA!, Athol Fugard's gripping, eloquent drama about teaching and learning within segregated South Africa for four performances at the Kitchen Theatre Company February 16-18.  

Civic Ensemble will remount their production of MY CHILDREN! MY AFRICA!, Athol Fugard's gripping, eloquent drama about teaching and learning within segregated South Africa for four performances at the Kitchen Theatre Company February 16-18.

Civic Ensemble will remount their production of MY CHILDREN! MY AFRICA!, Athol Fugard's gripping, eloquent drama about teaching and learning within segregated South Africa for four performances at the Kitchen Theatre Company February 16-18.  

Civic Ensemble will remount their production of MY CHILDREN! MY AFRICA!, Athol Fugard's gripping, eloquent drama about teaching and learning within segregated South Africa for four performances at the Kitchen Theatre Company February 16-18.