Our Mission

“It’s the past we step into and how we repair it.”

Amanda Gorman, Poet Laureate

T.O.R.C.H. is a traveling educational theatre collective committed to exploring our common American heritage by illuminating the historical battles between the American ideal that we are all created equal and the harsh reality of racism that continues to separate us. 

Through performance we are committed to reexamining American history from new entry points of racial injustice in order to help us understand our painful legacy of racism.  We seek to inspire our audiences to re-think the past and make the connections of how American history has shaped our current social issues. By engaging our audiences to participate in civic dialogue about contemporary issues of racial injustice (such as mass incarceration, economic inequity, etc) we seek to deepen and re-envision a more unified society. 

Civic engagement is a crucial part of any democracy, providing everyday people with knowledge of our Constitution and government functions, empowering us to become well-informed, active citizens, offering the opportunity to transform the world around us. 

“The history of America is the history of the Negro in America. And it’s not a pretty history.”

James Baldwin