Tucker-Boatwright Festival of Literature & the Arts

Tucker-Boatwright Festival of Literature & the Arts

The University of Richmond presents the Tucker-Boatwright Festival of Literature and the Arts annually. Each year, the festival is awarded to a different department within the humanities—developing robust public programming around a broad theme, with the goal of having a conversation about the role of the humanities on campus and in our community. The Department of Theatre & Dance is happy to have hosted the festival on numerous occasions.

View all past festivals

Department of Theatre & Dance hosted:

Tucker-Boatwright Festival of Literature & the Arts

Culture Unbound

2026-27

A theatre is just an empty space — until we fill it. In the light of our imaginations it becomes a place; in the rhythm of our expressions it becomes a moment. A time to witness, to engage with ideas, to feel alive, to experience culture in community. 

Culture Unbound calls for an expansive understanding of culture as something not only inherited, but actively made, contested, and transformed through artistic practice, public dialogue, and collective imagination. To be unbound is to orient toward horizons, to recognize culture as future-seeking, relational, and always evolving. Culture Unbound is a celebration of the many voices, histories, and practices that shape our lives. It is also a call to courage — to imagine boldly, to ask difficult questions, and to take part in building a more just world and a liberated future together through art. 

Tucker Boatwright Festival

Dancing Histories: This Ground

2019-20

This festival presented performances, lectures, panel discussions, and residencies by artists whose works reflect a unique engagement with contemporary politics and the interplay between history and memory.

The Personal is Political / The Political is Personal

2017-18

The 2017-18 festival offered performances, lectures, artist residencies, master classes, and films that encourage us to examine the ways in which the personal and the political are inextricably intertwined. The festival presented theatre artists and scholars whose work explores notions of identity, citizenship, and the challenges of personal and collective action.