Art Restart Podcast: Ariel Fristoe
For more than two decades, Ariel Fristoe has been at the center of one of the country’s
most inventive experiments in how theater can live inside a community.
As the artistic director of Atlanta’s Out of Hand Theater, she has shaped an organization known not for occupying traditional stages but for embedding performance inside civic life, partnering with schools, nonprofits, public agencies and neighborhood groups to spark dialogue and move people toward collective action.
In this interview, Ariel reflects on how this approach emerged, how her own leadership evolved alongside it, and why she believes artists are uniquely equipped to work on the most urgent social issues of our time.