The play was developed through hundreds of hours of conversations with dozens of stakeholders of all kinds: advocates, academics and artists, policymakers and those impacted by those policies. Sometimes they were more formal interviews, sometimes they were facilitated group conversations, and often they were sparked by just being next to each other in housing spaces. Across Washington DC, Los Angeles, the Twin Cities, Syracuse, NY, and online nationally, we spoke to 350+ people in 50+ focused discussions (and many, many, many more in less formal settings)!

Each production of The Most Beautiful Home…Maybe had at least 6 community engagement activities that accompanied the production and local development. These events invited audiences to learn about local housing policy. These activities came in a variety of flavors: talks, workshops, short performances and town hall dialogues. A favorite was a day-long symposium we co-produced in Little Tokyo and Skid Row with friends from the Little Tokyo Service Center. “Housewarming” (Saturday, May 21, 2022) was a walking tour led by Skid Row community advocates that taught the participants about the zoning and policy decisions that shape these neighborhoods that neighbor each other. The group was treated to lunch, and a live band set up in the offices of LA Community Action Network. The day ended with dancing FandangObon with Nobuko Miyamoto in the courtyard of the Japanese American Cultural & Community Center.

In our conversations with advocates, we heard that there was a big gap between the conversations they were having with us and those they were having with their peers. The gap was imagination - or more directly, the gap was a willingness to let big, audacious ideas happen in their conversations. They needed this gap to be closed. We developed a training series for advocates to address this need and have led dozens of facilitatino workshops.