OAKLAND, CALIF.: The Network of Ensemble Theaters (NET), a national solidarity network of ensemble-based theatremakers, collectives, and collaborators, is now in the midst of NETWeek Bay Area in Oakland and San Francisco (Huchiun and Yelamu). A continuation of a pilot program that began in Chicago in May, the West Coast confab lasts Oct. 5-10, with programming including a cooperative healthcare design table, a new Artist-Organizer Matchmaking Initiative, and On Record at BAM House.
According to the organizers, NETWeek Bay Area is designed as a week for building infrastructure among movements and people. It brings cultural workers, artists, and organizers together “at the same tables, on the same land, in the same street,” who “intend to build the infrastructure the old model never provided.” This week begins a multi-year residency in the Bay Area alongside four other cities across the country.
This conversation transpires in the middle of a national argument. Over the summer, Public Theater artistic director Oskar Eustis, announcing his 2028 departure, told The New York Times that “the American nonprofit theatre movement is over.” Alexandra Meda—co-network director of the Network of Ensemble Theaters, board co-chair of Theatre Communications Group (which publishes this magazine), and Studio Luna/FKA Teatro Luna artistic director—was one of many leaders who responded. Her essay “The Movement Is Alive. Turn the Music Up.” was reshared by hundreds of artists and on American Theatre‘s Facebook page. She also spoke at a Sept. 29 DeVos Institute panel on the question.
“Oskar Eustis is right that something is ending: the arrangement that built $80 million buildings while the artists who make the work still can’t count on health insurance from one gig to the next,” said Meda in a statement. “The movement is alive, and next week in Oakland you can watch it work: artists, co-ops, and labor designing portable healthcare for cultural workers through a new pilot with one of the largest labor unions in the country. Directors retire. Movements don’t.”
NETWeek also arrives as the Bay’s cultural workers are fighting to hold ground. In June 2025, Oakland eliminated its cultural affairs manager position to close a budget gap; artists and organizations protested until the city reinstated it in December, and Lyz Luke was named to the role in January 2026. Nationally, funders are starting to capitalize shared infrastructure: On Sept. 15, nine foundations, including Oakland’s Kenneth Rainin Foundation, committed $25 million to the Nonprofits Insurance Alliance, a member-governed insurance cooperative for nonprofits. The Federation Table takes up the question that commitment leaves open: who covers the artists and cultural workers inside those organizations.
The week’s gatherings take place at Understory, a worker-owned cooperative restaurant in Fruitvale; with Sogorea Te’ Land Trust at the Pinnantak Garden in Huchiun (Berkeley); at the SUMUD: Resistance Until Liberation mural on 26th Street in Oakland; at EastSide Arts Alliance; and at BAM House in Oakland’s Black Arts Movement Business District.
NETWeek Bay Area also carries two of NET’s national efforts. The Federation Table is part of a national design phase for the NET Federation, a cooperative for cultural workers offering pooled benefits, mutual aid protocols, portable healthcare, and shared purchasing. Its anchor pilot brings portable healthcare to cultural workers through the health and welfare fund of one of North America’s largest labor unions, and with it, the beginnings of a national co-op local for cultural workers.
The second is a national matchmaking initiative pairing frontline workers and community organizers with artist facilitators. Its first session opens Friday at EastSide Arts Alliance, led by Hénia Belalia and Rad Pereira, with artist facilitators Cat Brooks, playwright, KPFA host, and co-founder of the Anti Police-Terror Project; L.M. Bogad, political performance artist and UC Davis professor whose troupe of dancing mailboxes and ballot boxes met voters from 2020 to 2024; Ashley Smiley of Campo Santo, the Magic Theatre, and the African American Art and Culture Complex; Rebecca Fitton and jose esteban abad of Bridge Live Arts; and Sarah Morrisette, Shavonne S. Allen, Nazelah Jamison, and Lula Falol of Skywatchers.
Gathering has been NET’s medium for more than 30 years, including in-person and virtual convenings, experiments, pilots, knowledge, and resources. According to the organizers: “In the Bay, gathering has a sharper name: solidarity. This is the region where liberation refuses to stay single-issue: Indigenous, Black, and Palestinian struggle held as one image on one Oakland wall; land moving back into Indigenous hands; restaurants owned by the people who cook in them.”
Programming includes by-invitation only events like the Federation Table: Collective Practice, Cooperative Power (Oct. 6), a three-hour lunch bringing co-ops, labor, solidarity networks, and artmakers together to investigate cooperative infrastructure for cultural workers; and a small invited crew’s day of tending followed by a shared meal in Pinnantak Garden, Berkeley (Oct. 7), entitled “Sogorea Te’ Service Day: Right Relationship Is a Work Day.”
NET will also present “Rehearsing for the Real Thing: Theatre Tools for Frontline Workers” on Oct. 9, the first matchmaking session of NET’s national initiative pairing frontline workers and community organizers with artist facilitators, and a live, public “Bay Area: Black Women Directors, Makers + Leaders” roundtable on Oct. 10, facilitated by Lauren Turner Hines, with featured speakers Dr. ayodele nzinga, Cat Brooks, Elizabeth Carter, and Edris Cooper.
Featured artists also include Paul S. Flores, spoken word artist, playwright, and 2023 American Book Award winner; Claudia Alick, national leader, producer, and inclusion expert, and founding producer of the transmedia social justice company Calling Up Justice; Richard A. Mosqueda, theatrical director and producer; Alia Sharrief, acclaimed hip-hop artist; Ka’Ra Kersey, Bay Area-based singer and songwriter; Naima Shalhoub, musician, educator and multidisciplinary artist; The Shadow Band; Flavia Elisa Mora, poet, muralist, and DJ; Lauren Turner Hines, founding envisionist and executive lead of the André Cailloux Center for Justice and the Performing Arts in New Orleans; and Elizabeth Carter, regional director and actor.
Additional partners include Golden Thread Productions, HowlRound, Bridge Live Arts, Calling Up Justice, and Stage Left Report. NET has provided the code NETCODE for 15 percent off tickets to Golden Thread’s ReOrient Festival 2026.
Some rooms are open, some are invitation only. Registration starts at $9 per event, and waivers are available by emailing info@ensembletheaters.net. All event registration and the full schedule of programming is available online.
