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OUR MISSION
At Arizona Theatre Matters, we begin with the conviction that artists are our teachers. As apprentices to the people with whom we work, we approach every collaboration ready to have our assumptions challenged and our imaginations expanded. We build theatre and educational programs that embrace the many ways humans communicate, learn, and create. Sound, sign, captioning, performance, conversation, and lived experience are woven into our creative process because every way of communicating has the power to deepen the art. By making room for every artist and every way of creating, more people become collaborators, the art grows bolder, and audiences encounter stories—and one another—in entirely new ways.
OUR BACKGROUND
Arizona Theatre Matters was founded in 2012 by Jeanmarie Simpson as a theatre company committed to making work that could reach people beyond the limits of conventional stages.
Over time, that commitment has grown into a distinctive artistic model: digital theatre shaped by voice, sign, sound, image, language, and lived experience. When theatres closed during the COVID-19 pandemic, ATM expanded its online work through YouTube. What began as a practical response became a global platform for performance, education, and artistic inquiry.
Today, Arizona Theatre Matters creates productions, study guides, toolkits, workshops, and master classes for audiences, educators, artists, and communities. Its work is rooted in collaboration with Blind voice actors, Deaf Sign Language Performers, directors, writers, designers, scholars, elders, disabled artists, and artists across cultures and generations.
UNEVEN MINDS
The company’s current intellectual and artistic center is Uneven Minds, an inquiry into cognition, trauma, creativity, education, support, and artistic emergence. Uneven Minds asks a question that reaches across ATM’s productions and programs:
What becomes possible when the room is built for the people in it?
Arizona Theatre Matters designs the conditions in which stories can be encountered through multiple pathways. By bringing together artists, educators, communities, and audiences, we cultivate environments where participation, creativity, and unexpected forms of understanding can emerge.