Michael Rohd
Michael Rohd has spent thirty-five years asking what it takes for people who don't usually talk to each other to actually talk. He began in 1991 running theater workshops at a hidden HIV clinic in a Washington DC homeless shelter and spent the following decade leading Hope is Vital, a national HIV/AIDS theater and dialogue program. He co-founded Sojourn Theatre in Portland, taught at Northwestern and ASU, and joined the University of Montana in 2022 to found the Co-Lab for Civic Imagination. He is the author of Theatre for Community, Conflict, and Dialogue, the field manual for applied civic theater practice in the US. His current project, State of Mind — created in partnership with Montana Repertory Theatre — is a touring theater and public dialogue residency on behavioral health that has reached 37 Montana communities and more than 2,700 participants. He is still revising the field manual.