Artistic Discipline: Theatre, Creative Writing

“We strive to give audiences artistic experiences that reflect their own lives, give new life to their stories, and inspire them to new possibilities.”


Susan Southard is a member of the 2016 AZ Creative Aging Teaching Artist Institute cohort.

The Teaching Artist Institute is a five-month training program that will introduce teaching artists to the variety of settings, programs, and partners that make up the creative aging field, and provide skills-building activities for participants to attain the specialized knowledge needed to work successfully with older adults. Inspired by ArtSage and other national models, the Institute has been developed around the philosophies of person-centered care, a process-based approach, and cultural responsiveness. To learn more about AZ Creative Aging and the Teaching Artist Institute click here.

Susan Southard is the founder and artistic director of Essential Theatre, a professional, multicultural ensemble serving marginalized communities across Arizona and the United States. The company’s primary art form is Playback Theatre, an interactive, improvised performance format in which audience members tell stories from their lives and watch them brought to artistic life through music, movement, and theatre. Playback Theatre performances reflect the diversity of human experience and celebrate our common humanity. Through its performances and workshops, Essential Theatre gives audiences artistic experiences that reflect their own lives, give new life to their stories, and inspire them to new possibilities. The company’s inner-city and rural audiences include incarcerated and at-risk youth, homeless adults and children, domestic violence survivors, veterans and their families, international refugees, and aging adults. The company also works with public school children and educators. Organizational clients include corporations, government agencies, conferences, small businesses, schools, and social service agencies.

Susan also holds an MFA in creative writing from Antioch University, Los Angeles, and was a nonfiction fellow at the Norman Mailer Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts. Her first book, Nagasaki:  Life after Nuclear War (Viking, 2015), tells the dramatic eyewitness accounts of five survivors from 1945 to Nagasaki today, unveiling the neglected story of the enduring effects of nuclear war. Nagasaki was published to international critical acclaim and was named a best book of the year by the Washington Post, The Economist, and Kirkus. Susan’s work has also appeared in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Politico, and Lapham’s Quarterly. She has taught at Arizona State University’s Piper Writers Studio and the University of Georgia, and directed creative writing programs for incarcerated youth and at a federal prison for women outside Phoenix.

Website: http://www.ercregistry.com/EssentialTheatre

On Wednesday, October 12, 2016, Susan Southard was announced as the recipient of the 2016 Dayton Literary Peace Prize, an international award for literature that promotes peace, social justice, and global understanding, for her book, Nagasaki: Life After Nuclear War. 

Photos (from left to right): Scene from a Playback Theatre public performance by Essential Theatre, featuring Susan Southard, Lorenzo Aragon, John Cremer, and Jackie Masei; Susan Southard, Gina Santi Photography; Scene from a Playback Theatre performance at HomeBase Youth Services by Essential Theatre, featuring Lorenzo Aragon and Jackie Masei.Â