TAPROOT CULTURAL TROUPE

Reform, Resist, Re-imagine and Re-create.

Our TapRoot Cultural Troupe uses giant puppets, original songs, and visual art for climate justice roadshows, protests, and direct actions. Through this work, we engage audiences in conversations about distributed solar, community resilience, and fighting utility monopolies, demonstrating cultural organizing's power for a just energy future.

WHAT IS THE TAPROOTS CULTURAL TROUPE?

The TapRoot Cultural Troupe is  NCCJC's cultural organizing program. We use the power of art — including music, drumming, giant puppets, and street theater – to fuel social transformation, engage and educate communities, and embed the 4 Rs into our protest actions and educational roadshows.

Roadshows

Our Roadshows take the 4 Rs of social transformation to the people. One example of this is “The Good Fire”, an interactive, multi-media performance that we wrote. The performance, an allegory for renewable energy and community resilience that combines spoken word, large portable murals, Indigenous music, and giant puppets. Through the performance, we engaged communities in re-imagining a just energy future, discussed how to reform the current broken energy system, learned about new models for distributed solar, and resist the utility monopoly. “The Good Fire” toured with local artists, musicians, activists, and youth puppeteers (thanks to Jan Berger and Paperhand Puppet Intervention) and led to deep engagement with a teach-in on NCCJC's four frontline issues.

Protest and Actions

NCCJC brings creative cultural work to actions all over North Carolina and the Southeast and amplifies other organizations’ events. For instance, on April 29, 2017, NCCJC took the lead in organizing a contingent at the People’s Climate March in DC, where we put together a massive street theatre performance. Over a month-long art build, we made over 500 pieces of art. We then worked with eight busloads of North Carolina protestors to figure out how to get more than 500 people to the front or back of the march to dance, sing, and otherwise participate in our performances at the start and finish of this national action.More recently, our drummers led the march during the September 2019 Triangle Climate Strike and later used an original song to disrupt Governor Cooper’s meeting with the Interagency Climate Council, demanding truly clean energy.

Check out last year's line up

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