Melissa Nussbaum Freeman

I am a theatre maker. I am performance-installation artist/director/playwright/actor/teaching artist/activist. My work is significantly influenced by my adult life in Mexico, 1985-2009, where I lived and worked as a midwife/healer/educator, gave birth to my son, raised my family, and trained in Theatre Arts (BFA) at the Centro Morelense de las Arts.I continue to have a strong connection to the mountain town I lived in and the realities that make people leave it and look for economic security in the north. I am also guided by two core values: Tikum Olam (repairing the world) and Welcoming the Stranger. 

As a Playback Theatre artist: NEFA's Creative City Grant, 2017, funded my project, The Table/La Mesa: The Welcome Project. This project was a new iteration of my ExpressingBoston Fellowship, The Welcome Project, and helped to establish RED SAGE STORIES: PLAYBACK THEATRE & ART FOR SOCIAL CHANGE as an artistic community resource. "On the Bus", devised work from Roxbury/Dorchester stories dramatized by RSS of being welcomed was performed for hundreds of neighborhood residents. RED SAGE STORIES: PLAYBACK THEATRE & ART FOR SOCIAL CHANGE, offers Playback Theatre in Spanish, Cape Verdian Creole, and ASL, teaching and performing with and for youth, adults, and seniors. We regularly perform at Haley House, Roxbury. My second Creative Cities grant spaned the pandemic 2019-2021 and I adapted Playback Theatre to fit into the zoom format. This project, Store-d Stories, captured the experiences of immigrant shopkeepers of Jamaica Plain's Three Squares District. The nine videos that were created from the interviews and playback dramatizations were aired on Boston Neighborhood Network.

I am particularly excited about my team's upcoming NEFA'S PUBLIC ART GRANT: COLLECTIVE IMAGINATION FOR SPACIAL JUSTICE - Perfomance, theatre & storytelling that supports a world without prisons, jails and police.The experiences of the most impacted women from the most incarcerated neighborhoods are documented in Families for Justice As Healing's LISTENING TOUR (LT). With NEFA's assistance, during 3 workshops we will use theatre exercises to explore & collectively imagine the theatrical possibilities of these findings. Leading with questions about housing & "Reimagining Communities": What does a thriving community look like to you? How can storytelling help to deal with the trauma of incarceration? How can the "second sentencing" of re-entry be exposed in performance? How do we dismantle prisons & jails?

I am convinced that Playback Theatre is an extraordinary theatrical tool for healing, artistry and building community. See Red Sage Stories profile for how we combine performance art & Playback Theatre.

I have studied and performed with True Story Theater, Big Apple Playback of NY., Playback of the Port, Cambridge, MA, and troupes that are created by other artists for special performances. I have worked with diverse communities that include Vets, People with Disabilities, formerly incarcerated people, Seniors, LGBTQ, cancer patients and their families. Themes are as wide ranging as as stigmas, loss of abilities, Memories of Home, Being Single, Overcoming Obstacles, Fears and Hopes. My experience with Playback Theatre includes Assistant teacher, Brandeis University, Playback Theatre Class. Collaborating with Northeastern University Crossings to create a community engagement program using Playback Theatre. I have studied coaching directly with Jo Salas, co-founder of Playback Theatre.

As director: On the Loeb Mainstage, Cambridge, from Oct 26-Nov 4, 2017, I directed "JOGGING, Theatre in Progress", for the Visiting Director Project at Harvard-Radcliffe Drama Club. I adapted and wrote new material for this original one-woman show by Lebanese actor/playwright Hanane Hajj Ali for a full cast. The play examines the hard question: "What horrific conditions must exist for a mother to take her child's life?" I created a interactive pre-show exhibit that gave audience members a unique experience of Lebanon and involved the Lebanese/Middle Eastern community.     I brought to the stage Henrietta Lacks' story and the legacy of medical apartheid in HENRIETTA, an original play by Licia Sky. My directing experience also includes several episodes of the scripted indie tv show OFFSEASON (Amazon Prime).

As playwright: Commissioned works: "What You Seek Is Seeking You" (Rumi), Inter-Actions, Performance Art X Art That Performs; Outside the Box, Boston Common and Channel Center Garage, Fort Point; "Threw the Keyhole", Fort Point Theater Channel; "Harbor Island Herstory", Boston Harbor [Re] Creation. One-woman shows: LA DOÑA OF SANTA CRUZ, my apprentiship with a traditional Mexican healer; MARILYN MONROE, COMMUNIST, the disenchanted Hollywood icon's words are woven with my own story of growing up in the 50s/60s a Red Diaper Baby; SOR JUANA INES DE LA CRUZ WASHES ASHORE, the 17th C Mexican literary giant leeps the convenant wall, crosses the desert and becomes an undocumented domestic worker. Full-length plays: LILLIAN & MARSHA, an undocumented caretaker discovers an aging Lesbian's secret; LOOKING FOR PARVEEN SATIR, two Pakistani poets, past and present. WALLS, selected by We Create Festival, Hibernian Hall, Roxbury, April 2019, has been developed into a 50 min interactive play that looks at the relationship of the walls we build externally and how they live within us - specifically addressing the Mexican/American Border Wall and the Israeli/Palestine Separation Wall.

As Performance-Installations artist: In 2016 I was one of eight artists ExpressingBoston Public Art Fellows working with The Design Studio for Social Intervention (ds4si) along the Fairmount Cultural Corridor. I prototyped THE DOOR in Upham's Corner - an interactive exploration of neighborhood ownership of public institutions. This Fellowship was funded by The Boston Foundation and also supported by Artist-in-Residency at Fairmount Innovation Lab. THE DOOR became THE WELCOME DOOR - a free standing door to which I invite anyone to knock and be welcomed to any time or place where they have not been welcomed. The Welcome Door is magic. It has been featured at RoxPOP, Roxbury; Unitarian Universalist First Parish Dorchester; FigmentBoston, The Greenway; the Fuller Craft Museum; Hutchings St Block Party, Roxbury; DSNI's Multi-Cultural Festival, Roxbury; inPublic, Upham's Corner; Affordable Housing Action at City Hall, Boston; inPublic, Downtown Crossing, Boston. 

Other installations: A Gay T Party, staged on the Back Bay Station of the Orange Line. A Timely Limerick in Motion, post-its on buses, trains and stations.

As actor: being a bi-lingual, Spanish/English, actor, I often perform with ESCENA LATINA TEATRO, Boston's premier Spanish language theater troupe. The company was awarded NEFA's Creative City Grant enabling free summer presentations. I have trained at Shakespeare & Co and have be seen as Don Armado in LOVE'S LABOUR LOST and Touchstone in the Merely Players' production of AS YOU LIKE IT. There's kind of a theme there. I also perform on screen, and regularly participate in web series such as OFFSEASON; The Pineapple Diaries; Hot Dog and the Ninja; Adder Mountain.

Residencies: First Artist Cohort of BostonAIR (Artist-in-Residence), 2015; Fairmount Innovation Lab, Dorchester, 2016; MakeShift Boston, 2016. .

As Teaching Artist: "Finding our voice through theatre", an experiential workshop about Othello for ESL/ELA 10th and 11th grade students at Madison Park Technological and Vocational High School, 2018, 2017. "Introduction to Theatre", an experiential workshop for 5th -7th grade students at Conservatory Lab. "Street Theatre for Anti-Racist Actions", performance skill training for Coalition Anti-Racist Artists Of Boston, CARAB. On-going community training in Playback Theatre.

 In 2021, Red Sage Stories went virtually to Nigeria for 12 consecutive weeks to teach young women theatre skills and prepare them to perform their devised works about kidnapping and bullying.