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Our Mission
Elif makes theater that is necessarily live. We draw on social, interactive, and immersive elements to create theatrical experiences that go beyond just performance.
Our Plays
To ensure our plays fulfills our mission, on every project we ask ourselves:​​
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How can we bring audiences and artists together?
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How can audience members interact with one another, or become characters in the show?
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What multimedia or activities can we introduce to elevate the themes of our story?
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How can the audience’s actions transform the story into something new every night?
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And many more questions that aim to make our theater a place of active engagement and social interaction.
Our Process
We develop all of our pieces in highly collaborative and interdisciplinary settings. Collective devising forms a strong basis of our work regardless of whether a project is playwright-, actor-, or director-driven. Finally, we never forget our audience: we incorporate their experience into the earliest stages of our development by inviting them to test and provide feedback on our works in progress.
Accessibility & Warmth
You feel warm when you’re at home. Elif is committed to making our spaces a home for queer people and people of the Global Majority. This commitment includes not only outreach to queer and BIPOC community members, but also uplifting their stories in our new plays.
We can't expand live theater’s power to build community without opening the doors to everyone. Elif is committed to providing low-cost or free access to all our programming for community members in need.
Why "Elif"?
Elif is the first letter of the Semitic writing systems used for languages like Arabic, Hebrew, Phoenician, Persian, Swahili, and Ladino. It's a unique letter that lacks its own inherent sound. Diacritic markings on top or below Elif modify its pronunciation.
Elif is our metaphor for collaborative practice. An original project–a story, dance, melody–is an Elif. Only through collaboration does that project come to life.
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