The Three Stages of Insight Artistry

There are three main stages of our work: critically discovering, creatively exploring and aesthetically expressing

  • Critical Discovering

    The TÉA artists begin by participating in Insight conversations with dozens of individuals concerned about the personal and social dynamics of something that matters in their lives. We collectively wonder with the individuals about the way they are using their minds to understand and respond to these dynamics – which circumstances they identify as salient, the feelings that animate their responses, the options they consider, and the decisions they make.

    What we explore during these Insight conversations is invariably illuminating and dramatic, and as a company we pay critical attention to what has been shared with us.

  • Creative Exploring

    In a series of Insight Design labs, we devise experiences that enable the Company of artists to creatively discover various aesthetic expressions. These artistic manifestations actualize the theory of change distinctive to Insight art. The TÉA Artists pay explicit attention to how their own minds are working during this discovery stage, heightening the recognition of the need to be more curious when we catch ourselves in a rush to judgment or to be more conscientious when we realize we have been rash. This self-attention and reflection informs and becomes part of the art we are creating.

  • Aesthetic Expressing

    By creating a theatrical performance piece we are aesthetically expressing what we have explored and discovered during our process. We strive for a theatrical experience that enables artists and audience members to gain at least momentary liberation from the inner constraints of polarizing patterns of thinking and feeling by experiencing firsthand, the intrinsically dramatic, entertaining, and compelling inner shift from certainty and righteousness to curiosity and empathy. By immersing audience members in a theatrical experience that will heighten their awareness of the way they use their minds to respond to personal and social dynamics of an issue or set of issues, we hope to provide a dramatic opportunity for change.

  • Continue reading here for an in depth explanation of Insight artistry method.

History

For more than fifteen years, TÉA has been progressively developing Insight artistry, a framework for the collaborative design and creation of Insight art. 

  • In 2009 we partnered with Intersections International to gather and train the original company of TÉA actors, with whom we worked collaboratively to create Under the Veil: Being Muslim (and Non-Muslim) in New York, post-9/11. The piece was performed in six states to thousands of audience members.

  • In 2012, we produced Cadence: Home, exploring the personal experiences of veterans returning to their friends and family from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It was a site-specific piece performed in midtown Manhattan and Tampa, Florida.

    We began the incubation and development of a piece exploring the polarization of the United States. Originally titled There’s Something About America, the process became an initiative which yielded two distinct projects: Rocco, Chelsea, Adriana, Sean, Claudia Gianna, Alex and Accord(ing)

  • In 2014, in collaboration with the Mayor’s Innovation Team in Memphis, Tennessee we created Uniform Justice, a piece about police community relations. Uniform Justice premiered in Memphis and performed in Cleveland, New Jersey and in New York City where it was a part of the New York Fringe Festival. 

    On the strength of this success, TÉA became an official initiative of Intersections International, we continued to collaborate until 2015, at which time we formed TÉA Creative, Inc. to further develop and propagate Insight artistry. 

  • In 2019 we premiered the first piece yielded from the project originally titled There’s Something About America: Rocco, Chelsea, Adriana, Sean, Claudia Gianna, Alex, a piece about polarization and the polarizing habits of mind that keep us locked in damaging cycles. Rocco, Chelsea performed at Here Arts center in New York City.

  • In 2020 we produced the second piece that had been developed in our ongoing initiative exploring polarization in the United States: Accord(ing), produced in collaboration with SoundingLine Arts, explored the themes from Rocco, Chelsea in a fully immersive movement performance piece. Accord(ing) premiered at Burning Coal Theatre in Raleigh, NC – it was one of the only live theatrical performances produced during the pandemic.

  • In 2021, TÉA Creative became TÉA Artistry, an independent non-profit 501(c)(3) organization and began work on The Weaver Project, a multi-disciplinary project about the personal dynamics of race developed into three distinct iterations.

    The first iteration of the larger project was titled The Weaver, which premiered in 2021 as a site-specific performance workshop exploring the tug of history on its characters’ racial identities experienced in a Brooklyn townhouse in New York City.

  • In 2022, TÉA was named the New Ohio Theatre/IRT Archive Residency Company. During our tenure, The Weaver Project grew in scope and depth which yielded two distinct projects that both premiered at the New Ohio Theater: Paradigm and Being Chaka.

    Paradigm was a workshop performance that ran as part of the 2021 Ice Factory Festival. The piece explored and wrestled with the links between race, identity, and institutional roles.

  • In 2023 TÉA premiered Being Chaka at the New Ohio Theatre in New York City.

    Being Chaka is a two-act performance piece about wrestling with the personal and historical dimensions of race and identity.

    Due to the overwhelming success of the piece, it was subsequently produced and performed in 2025 at Burning Coal Theatre in Raleigh, NC.

  • TÉA is presently working on the North Star project: being present to spiritual possibilities. 

    If you are interested in learning more about our current project click here.

Watch TÉA’s Journey Project

Our Journey as of 2021 when TÉA became TÉA Artistry, a 501(c)(3) organization

Application and Impact

Insight Design Lab (IDL) is shorthand for the structured process TÉA uses to research, devise, and stage its theatrical performance pieces. Over the years, we have designed and led Insight Design Labs to create the TÉA theatre pieces that address the conflicts between Muslims and non-Muslims, veterans and civilians, police officers and community members, and people placed at odds with each other due to political polarization and racial difference. Each of these pieces has proved to be healing for audience members and artists alike, and in the process, we have honed our expertise in designing and leading Insight Design Labs. Given the range of social conflicts TÉA Artistry has explored, our productions have attracted an equally diverse set of audiences: military veterans, police officers, and a broad array of individuals and groups caught up in the polarizing dramas of race, religion, and politics that divide Americans from each other today. These audiences have been intrigued and engaged. Nevertheless, the most important community served by TÉA Artistry is arguably the community of artists – the actors, dancers, singers, musicians, videographers, and playwrights – that TÉA brings together to devise and perform its theatrical performance pieces. To date, over 150 artists have participated in the creation and production of TÉA’s performance pieces – some as repeat performers, many going on to employ what they have learned about Insight artistry in other artistic endeavors.

The impact of Insight artistry and the insight design labs on the artists is typically profound. It gives them an opportunity to employ their talents in the service of their highest aspirations for social change. To be sure, TÉA artists find it meaningful to be engaged as a working artist. But even more, they find it personally fulfilling to participate in a method of artistic creation that enables them to contribute to the advancement of social change and healing.

Insight artistry is a method of collaborative creativity. Employing this method, Insight artists are committed to creating work that asks its maker and its audience to wonder – to wonder with the kind of startling openness that lifts us out of our habitual ways of knowing and thinking, and into curiosity. At the heart of Insight is the exquisite attention we pay to the interiority of ourselves and others. It is with this in mind that we shape the stories we tell and the process with which we create them.