THE ARTS
PAGE 18 • GO! MAGAZINE
Thursday, april 1, 2021 • ThE BullETiN
Q&A with nonprofit founder Craig Brauner
BY DAVID JASPER
The Bulletin
Craig Brauner is the vice president and co-
founder of Ellipse Theatre Community, a new per-
forming arts nonprofit in Bend. Born and raised
in Louisville, Kentucky, Brauner moved to Bend
in 2018 and immediately became involved in the
arts community. After he collaborated with An-
gelina Anello-Dennee to produce the summer
2020 production ”Songs for a New World,” the two
began working on Ellipse. It aims to begin stag-
ing productions later in the year, but is already
making its presence felt on social media. On Mon-
day, Ellipse will launch “In Conversation With … a
Listening Project,” featuring Brauner interviewing
an array of creatives both Central Oregon and far-
ther afield.
The uniting thread: a desire to answer the sin-
gle question “What happens when we allow our-
selves to listen and create a space for someone to
be heard?”
The first episode of “In Conversation With … a
Listening Project” will be released Monday on You-
Tube (youtube.com/etcbend), with one of the 12
episodes releasing each week through late June
and shared on ETC’s Facebook (facebook.com/etc-
bend) and Instagram (@etcbend).
Can you take me to the beginning of this
project, and how it came to be?
Ellipse Theatre Community, one of our mis-
sions is to build a supportive and artisti-
cally aware community through the performing
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A:
arts and education. Before we even dove into
productions and creating a season of shows, we
really wanted to listen to our community, and
especially the artistic community. We were try-
ing to figure out what’s the best way to go about
this. It evolved into this listening project, where
my intention was to interview diverse artists and
diverse art forms, and to have an understanding
of what their experience is, and also just to know
them as a person and an artist. It was really sur-
prising, because, you know, the project, we had
this expectation, of, “Oh, we’ll just listen,” but what
came through are these pretty dynamic and sin-
cere moments of connection. I bonded with peo-
ple who have lost their parents, like I just lost my
mother in November, and I had these other mo-
ments of relating — just relating. We’re doing dif-
ferent, yet we found these moments of common
ground. We thought that this venture, this Listen-
ing Project, is important to achieving our mission
of creating community one stage at a time. That’s
kind of our tagline. We thought that this Listen-
ing Project was a great foundation for us as a new
nonprofit arts organization.
And the eventual goal is to start staging
shows too?
Yeah, the goal is to definitely start staging
shows. We’re in the process of developing
educational programming, outreach initiatives,
and of course theatrical productions, which ev-
erybody’s really excited about. We’ve actually
decided, just from the response to this Listening
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A:
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Submitted photo
Voiceover artist Barbara Rich, top, talks with Craig Brauner, co-founder of Ellipse Theatre Community.
Project, this is going to be an ongoing series we’ll
continue to do. We’re already planning on a sea-
son two.
Have you started shooting those?
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A:
No, we haven’t. We’re kind of pitching
ideas. Right now, the focus for season one
was diverse artists and diverse artforms. At the
moment with season two, I’m kind of curious
about other perspectives. I have this thought,
what if we focus on the essential workers. I’d love
to hear stories from those like nurses that have
worked in the COVID unit, a firefighter who’s
battling wildfires, the police officers, just really,
really tapping into the different avenues and
perspectives.
I liked in the press release how you asked
everyone in season one what inspires
them, and, well, maybe I can let you talk about
it.
Yeah, we embraced just the uniqueness of
the 12 people we interviewed. We did link
the conversations with one question I asked
throughout, and that was the question “What
inspires you?” That was my favorite question to
ask because more often than not, it was people.
That led to this really great conversation with (co-
Q:
A:
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median and actor) Jamal Thomas, who was the
last person I interviewed. … I was just amazed
by how many people said “People inspired me.”
I asked him, “Do you ever tell the people that in-
spire you that they inspire you?” And he said, “Ac-
tually, no.” It just led to this bigger thing of, wow,
we as people and as a community should really
start to talk more and to really offer our appreci-
ation, and when we’re inspired by someone, to
voice it. Because a lot of people don’t even know
that they’re inspiring.
It seems like a timely project, too. We’re all
in a kind of tough spot here, hopefully, at
the end of the pandemic. There’s a lot of
political and cultural division. Don’t you feel like
these community conversations need to happen?
Yeah, I do. And I think what was key in our
conversations, is that while I interviewed 12
very, very different people who are very different
from myself, and they shared their different per-
spectives, and yet we were always able to come to
a point where we were in agreement or we were
in alignment and we were just connected. And
it wasn’t politics, and it wasn’t religion. It came
down to the most core, authentic human con-
nection.
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David Jasper: 541-383-0349, djasper@bendbulletin.com