Global Play Brigade

The Global Play Brigade (GPB) is a volunteer community of play and performance activists, improvisers, clowns, musicians, educators and therapists who have come together in response to the global pandemic and the distressing, inequitable state of our world. We aim to bring people together across borders — to play, create, connect and grow — creating new pathways for social change.

Since the early days of the pandemic, chief organizer and Institute faculty, Cathy Salit, has galvanized hundreds of performance activists (including Institute alumni and Associates) to offer free play & emotional support sessions to inspire hope, creativity and development.

The Genesis of the Global Play Brigade

The Global Play Brigade emerged in response to the global pandemic that has impacted all of humanity. We are artists/performers/therapists/educators who come out of the growing social movement of performance activism. We believe that integrating and utilizing play, improv, clown, theater and therapeutics into everyday life is a vital methodology for creating hope, possibility, emotional well-being and development.

This current human crisis is unleashing a surge of human creativity and connection that has always been there but was hidden or suppressed — and now, out of necessity, it’s seeing the light of day in beautiful expressions across the globe.
The Global Play Brigade supports and builds with this creative human surge in order to serve, to create the “viable unheard of” and to build a global community for change. What kind of change? An end to poverty and all forms of discrimination.

Equitable access economically, socially, educationally, culturally. People’s democracy. Saving our planet. And, like performance activists the world over, we understand that an integral part of building a community that can make change means we must play, improvise and perform; developing our human ability and need to be creative, to love, laugh, cry, be socially connected, grow and be happy.