Who is the Caregiving community?

Examples of caregivers. . .

• Family: Caring for a spouse, a parent, a relative, or a child with a disability or chronic illness
• Community: the go-to people who take care of others in a community or a neighborhood, mutual aid, peer groups
• Professional caregivers: nurses, first-responders, body workers, hospice, senior care, PCAs, therapists, clergy, child care workers
• People who fill the gaps: social service, educators, recovery programs, residential care
• Intimate professions: hair stylists, bartenders, house cleaners, …
• If “caregiver” speaks to you, we want to hear your stories.

Art We’ve Made

Thank You for Holding: The Caregiver Play Project

Based on the true stories of caregivers across the spectrum of experiences, audiences will experience a series of interlocking fictional scenes that use puppetry, song, movement, and humor to entertain and provoke conversation and thought.

In the middle of the night, mysterious forces demand that Jonah accept a calling for caregiving that he would do anything to avoid. Carol battles with the inadequacies of social service support while she tries to ensure her brother gets the best care possible. Liyou cares for her aging mother and complex family while dealing with the demands and microaggressions of being a nurse, and Malcolm loses himself trying to support his mentally ill partner. Parents grapple with the joys and trials of caring for adult children with disabilities while day program staff try to build community among people of all abilities. Teenage children and middle-aged adults experience role reversals caring for sick, aging parents. Each character is alone and unique in their experiences, but united in the secret club that is being a caregiver.  

The show asks the audience to consider: What does a community of care look like? How do we place a value on care as a society?

Press coverage for Thank You for Holding:

Resources for caregivers

Recommended by caregivers we’ve met so far. Read more …

About this project

The last three years have magnified for many of us just how fragile the systems of care are in this country. Weaving together stories from caregivers here in Minnesota, our fictional play asks the question, “What does a community of care look like?” Story circles will took place in Spring and Summer of 2023, followed by a public reading in the Fall of 2023. After more story circles and rewrites in Winter and Spring of 2024, we cast a play with a mix of professional artists and people from the caregiver community interested in performing. The play performed from October 18th-November 3rd at 825 Arts in St. Paul.

About our work

For all our projects, we start by picking a community of people here in Minnesota with stories that are relevant to all of us but unknown to many of us. We gather stories from people in that community, and then we blend them together into a fictional play. We share drafts of the play in public readings for feedback, and we invite community members to perform in the play alongside professional performers when we finally produce it. It usually takes about two years.