Podcast Interview with Amy Brooks

What is the story we are called upon to tell about ourselves, our community, and our future? This is the question Amy Brooks holds when making intercultural rural-urban performance. On this episode of Trustees Without Borders, Amy discusses arts and culture as a catalyst for equitable development across real and perceived divides.

Amy Brooks is the former Program Director and Dramaturg for Roadside Theater, the theater wing of Appalachian grassroots arts and media center Appalshop. A West Virginia-New York cultural hybrid who returned to Appalachia just before the 2016 election cycle, Amy investigates the confluence of dramatic narrative (“What is the story we choose to tell onstage?”) and public narrative (“What is the story we are called upon to tell about ourselves, our community, and our future?”) in intercultural rural-urban performance. Amy holds a BFA in acting from West Virginia University and an MFA in dramaturgy from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where she co-founded and produced the first two seasons of the UMass New Play Lab.

Interviewers: Neda Moayerian, PhD candidate in Virginia Tech's Planning, Governance & Globalization program, and Vanessa Guerra, PhD candidate in Virginia Tech's Environmental Design and Planning program

Presented in partnership with the Department of Agricultural, Leadership, and Community Education at Virginia Tech