Waterwell

Founded in 2002 by Arian Moayed and Tom Ridgely, Waterwell is a nonprofit production company dedicated to telling engrossing stories that deliberately wrestle with complex civic questions. We create productions that are creatively daring and emotionally potent to cultivate connections across real and perceived divides. We produce using an evolving set of best practices influenced by the principles of community organizing and movement building, investigating how storytelling can have the most relevance and impact in effort to create a more just and humane society. Our projects manifest in more than one medium but everything we do is infused with our love of the immediacy of live performance. The company has produced a number of projects about various aspects of immigration, including Refugees + Resettlement in the United States, a commission from the Council on Foreign Relations; Do Not Tell Them I am a Prince, a real-life story about immigration detention, created in partnership with the Dignity Not Detention Coalition; Se Lo Que Es Pandemia/I Know What Pandemic Means, a short documentary about the experience of undocumented workers in Corona, Queens during the height of Covid-19, produced in collaboration with the news outlet Documented; The Flores Exhibits (www.flores-exhibits.org), a video series of artists, lawyers, advocates and immigrants reading sworn testimonies of children held in detention facilities at the U.S. / Mexico border, and The Courtroom: a reenactment of one woman's deportation proceedings, which featured a script taken verbatim from transcripts, was performed in real courtrooms around NYC and then adapted into a feature-length film that premiered at Tribeca (www.thecourtroomfilm.com)