About True Story Theater
True Story Theater’s mission is to promote social healing through theatre by building empathy, respect, and understanding in the honoring of true life stories.
True Story Theater is a nonprofit theater company that offers over 50-75 improvisational performances, skills training, and Active Bystander workshops a year for a wide array of clients in the greater Boston area and beyond. During the pandemic, we successfully transferred our work into an online format to meet the needs of our local and global communities.
In addition to offering monthly public shows, True Story’s work has served hospitals, universities, civic and community organizations, human rights commissions, religious communities, the LGBTQIA+ community, seniors, teen leaders, cancer survivors, activists, philanthropists, business leaders and more. We also perform for private individuals — for birthdays, weddings, anniversaries, and other important rites of passage and life events.
True Story Theater performs and teaches a style of improvisational theater called Playback Theatre. Volunteers from the audience are invited and helped to share what’s important in their lives. Actors listen deeply then spontaneously transform the stories into theater, portraying the heart of what they heard using dialogue, movement, music and song. From this simple interaction, people laugh, cry and experience surprising insights.
Our events create a respectful atmosphere where every voice can be heard and any story told — however ordinary or extraordinary, difficult or joyful. True Story Theater offers audiences fresh perspectives, deeper connections, and a renewed appreciation for our common humanity.
Read our Frequently Asked Questions for what to expect when coming to a performance.
True Story Theater’s home is in the Arlington, MA Cultural District
