Dell’Arte sustains and produces a series of community based arts engagement programs through partnerships with local agencies and non-profit organizations. These engagements include our Healthcare Clowning program that partners with Timber Ridge retirement community and we partner with Blue Lake Elementary School to provide theatre space for their performances. Dell’Arte’s Arts in Corrections program at Pelican Bay continues working with the incarcerated and is in its 10th year. Participants at PBSP work in ensemble to explore the creative act of generating theatre through the study of storytelling, character, improvisation, and original play development. It is through this healing-centered facilitation that participants focus on self-awareness through a creative lens and body-based artistic exploration in writing, movement, performance, and collaboration.

Dell’Arte continues to offer professional training in physical theatre and clowning to enhance the artists ability to relate to themselves and the world around them. The basis of the work is in daily training emphasizing the development of awareness through movement. We seek to develop an embodied actor who regards the space of the stage as a dynamic, poetic realm.

We continue our advisory partnerships with the Wiyot, Yurok, and Hoopa Tribes to advance learning and cultural exchange programs and projects which aim to amplify and uplift Native and Indigenous stories, experiences, language, and knowledges of the land.

Since 1990, we have produced the annual Mad River Festival, now named Baduwa’t Festival, in rural Blue Lake. Situated on the ancestral lands of the Wiyot Tribe, this five week festival offers a multitude of performances including an original Dell’Arte Company work in our amphitheater inspired by our region—which we call “theatre of place.” It also includes alumni performances, an experimental theatrical laboratory, a week of local music with the Humboldt Folklife Festival and more.