The mission of the Exquisite Corpse Company (ECC) is to develop and produce new work by emerging theater artists, visual artists, and musicians, in a supportive and inclusive environment utilizing the technique of ekphrastic creation and the surrealist concept of “collective assembly.”   

 

Founded in 2012 by Artistic Director Tess Howsam, and other like-minded artists, the vision of ECC is to build a supportive community across artistic mediums, investigating the line between artistic boundaries, audience integration, and create interdisciplinary work outside traditional artistic venues. A company comprised of queer, women-identifying, and non-binary artists, central themes to our work reflect contemporary issues of gender, sociological, political, and ecological themes.

 

Outside of working with our core collaborators, ECC remains committed to hiring creative teams that are at least 60% women-identifying or non-gender conforming. The goal since the company’s inception is to offer a safe space for interdisciplinary collaboration of emerging artists and to grow as a company to offer bigger platforms and extended support for this unique approach, furthering its medium's place within the established arts community.   

​

While Exquisite Corpse Company has been dedicated to gender parity since our inception in 2012 we acknowledge that our administrative staff has not reflected our mission of inclusiveness specifically in racial equity and to that we are accountable. Moving forward ECC will not only commit to gender parity on and off the stage but to racial parity. 

 

“Exquisite Corpse Company is a performance collective that makes work using the methodology of a surrealist parlor game: it commissions work to various artists and Frankenstein's their creations into a cohesive narrative.” - VICE Creators Project