R.I. theater community forms ‘performance exchange’

PROVIDENCE – Rhode Island’s performance community has announced the formation of The Rhode Island Performance Exchange, a community-based organization that will work to generate greater awareness about the state’s performance community.
The group also will work to better connect professionals working in the performance sector with each other to create new collaborations and resource sharing.
The exchange was spearheaded largely by Rebecca Noon, marketing and social media manager at Trinity Repertory Co., who also runs the local company Strange Attractor with her husband Jed Hancock-Brainerd.
“People kept referring to competition between theater companies, that artists shouldn’t go see each other’s shows, and that there wasn’t room for all the new companies cropping up,” Noon said in a statement. “Having spent my first years out of college in a much bigger theater company, I felt like this was crazy.”
Noon conducted the first meeting of the exchange last June and the collaboration has gained strength since then, she said in a statement.
So far it has produced a centralized website where people can see all companies in the state and a calendar listing all performances, an audience-review podcast of local productions, and a general audition for performers in Rhode Island.
The movement has the support of leaders at Trinity Repertory Co., The Gamm Theatre, the Mixed Magic Theatre, and the R.I. State Council of the Arts, among others.
“Everyone is invited and everyone belongs,” Noon said in a statement. “If we all agree that we’re in this together; that our work influences each other; that the way I function as a performing artist in this community affects the way every other organization functions, then the only thing left to ask is, am I willing to work to make everything better for everyone?”