mission & philosophy
The Forum Collective invites audiences to connect with and respond to the real world through informed, empathetic, and deeply human artistic experiences.
We blend live performance, gallery curation and journalistic reporting to contextualize current events and emotionally engage across communities. This unique mix of structure and process leads to work that speaks for, to, and with audiences.
Our projects are multidisciplinary and include live performance, visual & audio art, written articles, and digital data compositions. The end result relates to different types of people and learning styles while deeply exploring a central topic.
Our projects utilize interviewing and researching the communities or topics that are central to the work. While this forces our Artistic Board to consider respectful representation, this allows us to showcase the nuances in the narratives of marginalized groups.
Our projects focus on community outreach by including experts and advocates from relevant communities to lead or participate in panels and discussions.
members
Julius Rea*
Megan Calfas
previous members
Kieran Beccia*
Marisa Gabriela Croatt
Katharine Hada*
Lilia Houshmand
Leigh Rondon-Davis
Jesse Suterley*
Ryan Takemiya*
*founding member
history
With projects beginning in 2017, The Forum Collective was dedicated to crafting experimental art galleries and multidisciplinary programs integrating journalistic practices into artistic curation and generation. The following year, the collective formalized after receiving a Theatre Bay Area CA$H Grant for its first theatrical production (sarafael).
In 2020, The Forum Collective joined Playground SF’s Innovator Incubator and became fiscally-sponsed by the company. Thus, TFC was able to expand through crafting experimental film and digital content (Home, ether web series) and developing an interdisciplinary interview training program (ecosystems). The combination of working on varied projects in different mediums allowed members to formalize and solidified the unique artistic philosophy of the collective. In 2021, the company was granted a California Arts Council Impact Grant to establish a media literacy curriculum, which was developed in partnership with a Hayward Unified School District school for the 2025-26 academic year.
In 2023, The Forum Collective paused active production in order to re-focus its direction after five years of collective art making. The TFC 2026-2027 season will be publicly announced soon, with a full slate of projects currently in development.
awards, grants & prizes
2023 Theatre Bay Area CA$H Grant - Möbius
2021 California Arts Council | Impact Grant - (in)credibility [formerly “Möbius”]
2021 Sam Mazza Grant - (in)credibility [formerly “Möbius”]
2021 Zellerbach Family Foundation Grant
2020 Playground Incubator Innovator (current)
2020 Theatre Bay Area CA$H Grant - (in)credibility [formerly “Möbius”]
2020 FURY Factory BUILD Festival - ether
2018 Theatre Bay Area CA$H Grant - SARAFAEL
a commitment to supporting indigenous peoples
We encourage organizations and individuals to contribute to the Sogorea Te’ Land Trust in the form of an annual voluntary land tax to support re-matriation, cultural revitalization, and land restoration projects. If you would like to learn more or to incorporate this into your practices, please click on the button below.
current team
Based in the SF Bay Area, Julius Ernesto Rea uses playwriting, conflict resolution and arts producing to hold an empathetic mirror to the world—encouraging deep listening and deeper discourse. With a background as a journalist, he obtained a degree in Philosophy at San Francisco State University. He co-founded The Forum Collective, a multidisciplinary arts organization that focuses on new journalism, theater and community-focused events. Currently fiscally-sponsored under Playground SF’s Innovator Incubator, the company has received support from the Sam Mazza Foundation, the California Arts Council, and Zellerbach Family Foundation. As a playwright, Rea has participated in Crowded Fire Theatre’s Resilience and Development Lab, and is now part of the 2026-27 Playwrights Foundation Resident Playwrights Program. In 2025, he premiered The Day the Sky Turned Orange, as the playwright / book writer, produced by SFBATCO and Z Space. He is a previous recipient of a Theatre Bay Area (TBA) Arts Leadership Residency and the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Creative Corps Initiative Grant.
Megan Calfas is a 2026-2027 Resident Playwright at the Playwrights Foundation in San Francisco. Her play, Sleepover, was performed at the 2024 Edinburgh Fringe Festival. She co-directed three sold-out runs of the original storytelling show Crushing in NY and SF, most recently at A.C.T’s The Strand Theater. She has coached over 200 people on telling their true, personal stories live on stage and has, herself, performed stories for Back Pocket Media, First Person Story, and on PBS with Stories from the Stage. As a journalist, she has reported on the environment for the Los Angeles Times and investigated maternal mortality in Zanzibar. She is on staff with the Stanford Storytelling Project.