UMS announces No Safety Net 2.0, a three-week festival of three provocative theater productions plus a one-on-one installation performance, all of which foster timely conversations around topical social themes. The festival will be held January 22–February 9, 2020 on the University of Michigan campus and features 20 staged performances, two school day performances, and opportunities for open dialogue and conversation with artists and other audience members. The installation performances will take place throughout the festival in both Ann Arbor and Dearborn.

Productions include Javaad Alipoor’s The Believers Are But Brothers (masculinity and internet radicalization); Tania El Khoury’s installation As Far As My Fingertips Take Me (refugee crisis); Lee Minora’s White Feminist (race, feminism, and privilege); and Half Straddle’s Is This A Room: Reality Winner Verbatim Transcription (patriotism, interrogation, whistle-blowing).

UMS also presents a full suite of related activities that are open to the public (see below).

Meet the Theater-Makers

UMS’s Michael Kondziolka (VP, Programming and Production) and Mary Roeder (Programming Manager) joined No Safety Net artists Javaad Alipoor, Lee Minora, and Tina Satter for a discussion of theater as an platform for social change.

No Safety Net Podcast

Host Mary Roeder takes you behind the scenes in conversation with our artists and discovers the inspiration behind their groundbreaking work.

Listen and subscribe on Apple Podcasts or your preferred streaming platform.