ABD’s principal program, Skywatchers, reflects an enduring commitment to creating performance that centers the urgent concerns of formerly unhoused residents of San Francisco’s Tenderloin district, working with professional artists in a collaboration rooted in the ethos that large-scale social change begins with intimate, interpersonal relationships.

With art as a catalyst and common language, the multi-disciplinary, mixed-ability ensemble creates work that amplifies neighborhood stories and illuminates narratives too often invisible in our collective cultural production.

Since the inception of the project ABD/Skywatchers has created or collaborated on a repertoire of twenty multidisciplinary works and over forty events that range from formal- and site-specific performance, to intervention, ritual, visual art, and multi-media work as part of a long-term community-embedded social practice. Under Bluethenthal’s artistic direction, the Skywatchers Ensemble has created several projects over the past few years, including: I GOT A TRUTH TO TELL (2017), At the Table: VOICES and VISIONS (2018 and 2019 respectively), Queer As A Tuesday Night and Queer as a Tuesday Night: Ms. Carol (2018), Inside Hotel Iroquois (2019), A Love Extreme (2019), and Came Here to Live: Resilience and Resistance in the Containment Zone (2019).

ABD initiated the Skywatchers program in collaboration with Community Housing Partnership (CHP) and the Luggage Store Gallery.

For more information contact info@abdproductions.org.

Skywatchers is…

Collaborative
Resident-Centered
Change-Making
Community Building
Connective
Humanizing