Co-Director Meranda Flachs-Surmanek facilitating a Theater of Change workshop

WhyWOW Studio develops environments for people and organizations to exercise our civic imagination. Through expert facilitation and community-engaged artistry, we work with groups to create the futures we want with the histories we have.

We create opportunities for people to perform differently with each other—on stage, in organizations, and in civic life. We take great joy in working with groups of people who do not ordinarily find themselves working together intimately and relationally.

We are known for the creation of dozens of interview-based works with community groups across the country, the development of storytelling programs with thousands of U.S. healthcare workers, and partnering with grassroots activists to develop creative projects that commemorate stories targeted by practices of erasure. Our forthcoming co-edited and co-authored book Monuments Across Appalachian Virginia: Reimagining Place, Identity, and Mobility is under contract with University of Virginia Press (expected date of publication: 2027).

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To Our Partners & Collaborators
THANK YOU

“WhyWOW demonstrates a skilled hand in coalescing a group of essential strangers around a shared vision and collaborative practices, a courageous pursuit of truthful performance, a fierce determination for effective action, and an instinct for humor that releases the imagination into new comprehension.”
- Robert H. Leonard, performer, teacher, and scholar

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