The TCG National Conference is one of the largest nationwide gatherings of the not-for-profit theatre community. TCG has been gathering folks this way since 1976 and each year, the National Conference creates space for theatre practitioners across the globe to get inspired, learn from one another and build toward collective action. It’s also been a way for TCG and the field to get intimately familiar with theatre communities around the country, and to channel the particular energy of their artists.
In 2020, while we supported the field in contending with overlapping existential crises, TCG also completed a new strategic planning process. In our new plan, bolstered by our new mission to lead for a just and thriving theatre ecology, we’ve committed to centering the needs and experiences of BIPOC (Black, Indigenous People of Color) and BITOC (Black, Indigenous, Theatres of Color) throughout our programming. With that ongoing work in mind, it is our goal that our conferences will have some, if not all, of the following outcomes:
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Participants are able to process some of their personal and professional grief together, leading to healing for some, and others come away with new ideas and tools for activating models of collective care
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BIPOC, TGNC, disabled, and young theatre practitioners see more opportunities for leadership and collaboration open to them throughout the field
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Incremental yet transformative shifts in power structures and organizational practices – from leadership models, to artist support, to sustainability and divestment, to audience development, to issue advocacy and more – begin to emerge in theatres across the country, and those shifts begin to create safer, human-centered working conditions for our freelance artists.
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The local theatre community builds off their shared work on the TCG Conference into a longer term, inclusive process of peer support and collaboration, and Pittsburgh artists are invited to bring their work into other regional theatre communities.
In 1976, TCG convened its first ever National Conference. For the first few decades, the National Conference was biennial, held first on college campuses and then in cities across the country. In 2006, the National Conference became an annual event, and in 2020, we went virtual in response to the pandemic. In 2022, we held our first-ever hybrid National Conference, gathering in Pittsburgh, PA and online.
TCG is returning to a biennial National Conference schedule, with our next National Conference in 2024.