Your Optimism Is Not Required, created and performed by Philadelphia's Team Sunshine Performance, takes place at an intimate, outdoor performance site encircling a campfire. Guided by two performers, the audience comes to embody characters in the lives of Daughter and Dad: a fictional biracial teenager and her white father on a camping trip, confronting futures shaped by climate change.

Inspired by renowned Buddhist ecologist Joanna Macy’s work Active Hope: How to Face the Mess We’re in Without Going Crazy, Optimism is an original piece of participatory theater from Team Sunshine Performance that aims to move despair, anxiety, and hopelessness from immobilizing obstacles to animating forces of human connection.

WHERE: Burns Park (1300 Baldwin Ave, Ann Arbor, MI 48104)

WHEN: September 23, 24, 25 at 7 PM

RUN TIME: 75 minutes, including a post-show discussion that leads to roasting marshmallows, eating s'mores, and hanging out around the campfire.

It's free and includes one s'more for each guest!