About the Organization
It is the mission of Wandering Aesthetics to transform our community by strengthening human connection, empathy, and intellectual discourse through storytelling, live performance, classes, and other high-quality cultural encounters.
Dreamt into being on the mountains of Appalachia, where the company’s founders, Benjamin Rexroad and Kyle Jozsa, completed a thru-hike of the 2,185.9-mile Appalachian Trail, Wandering Aesthetics rose, like an overused cliche, from the ashes of Heads Up Productions. Beginning the organization as an Akron-based storytelling theatre company bent on exploring our American roots and identity through the lens of narrative, we endeavored to build community through person-to-person contact, connecting disparate “tribes” through our performances, investigating the human link in our diverse cultural heritage.
Known for our investigation into the art of storytelling and the ever-changing dynamics between performer and audience, we craft our performances from scratch. Even during our extended rehearsal processes, Wandering Aesthetics engages the community through a series of reoccurring events and classes. These include: Youth Classes, Adult Classes, Full Circle Storytelling (an event for community storytellers), The Electric Pressure Cooker Cabaret, and Bigger Than a Breadbox, (a variety show), one of the 2015 Knight Arts Challenge Winners. Most recently, Wandering Aesthetics, along with Gum-Dip Theatre and Dunamis Theatre opened the Akron Center for Art, Music & Performance, a space dedicated to the development of performing artists.
