The Hinterlands is a Detroit-based company that creates genre-defying multidisciplinary performance works that radically re-imagine the relationship between spectator and performer. The company explores the art of performance through explosive and ecstatic training, and engages its local and global neighbors through direct collaboration and exchange.  Our Mission: To create essential, immediate and visceral performances that propel our audiences into a landscape of questions, possibilities and unknowns; to develop training for the 21st century performer that integrates body and voice, content and form, impulse and technique, technology and tradition; to band together with our community to explore the unmapped regions of our culture, our world, and ourselves – the hinterlands.

The Hinterlands was formed in September 2009 by co-directors Richard Newman and Liza Bielby. Before forming The Hinterlands, ensemble members worked with diverse international ensembles including Double Edge Theatre (Ashfield, MA), The Dell’Arte Company (Blue Lake, CA), Jinjiang Yishu Tuan (Chengdu, China), Bond Street Theatre (New York, NY), Great Small Works (New York, NY) and Changfu Jutuan (Chengdu, China). They have performed throughout North America, as well as in Kosovo, Bali, Germany, Macedonia, Poland, Spain and China.

The Hinterlands and their programs have been funded by the National Performance Network, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, Asian Cultural Council, TCG/ITI, The Puffin Foundation and CEC ArtsLink.