Mirror Stage

Mission:
Mirror Stage uses the power of story and art to challenge assumptions, bias and prejudice, increasing equity and inclusion while encouraging more thoughtful reflection on today’s issues.
Vision:

Mirror Stage believes the power of story holds the key to bringing people together in imagining and embodying a better future. We nurture unique artistic voices through arts programs and events that play it smart without playing it safe. With the goal of increasing empathy and social justice, Mirror Stage connects people more deeply to perspectives and experiences other than their own, while amplifying historically excluded stories, voices, and faces—bringing us to a place of common understanding. Mirror Stage gets people talking, as well as thinking.

Values:

• Challenge: We focus on thought-provoking, relevant, progressive, risky, and inspiring work—encouraging people to examine their responses more intentionally.
• Integrity: We practice the highest standards of excellence and ethics in all interactions. We are committed to embracing the full range of human experience at all levels: in our programs, in our audience, on our staff, and within our leadership.
• Partnership: We collaborate with artists, audience and community members to find the best path forward and create positive change.
• Respect: We cultivate and nurture an atmosphere of respect and inclusivity, welcoming differing strengths, skill sets, cultures, and abilities.

Mirror Stage has a history of inviting a larger population to see themselves and their stories represented onstage, affirming a broader range of experiences. In March 2025, Mirror Stage unveiled Ripple Effect: Positive Change Around the Sound, its reimagined podcast with a fresh new format, highlighting the important work of local changemakers. In partnership with Humanities Washington, Mirror Stage commenced Holding the Moment, a live-streamed and in-person speaker series designed to spark critical conversations on censorship, erasure, and resistance through storytelling in July. Both 2025 programs embody Mirror Stage’s core belief: that storytelling is a tool for transformation. The heart of Mirror Stage’s mission has always been: representation matters, and story can bridge the divides that separate us. Mirror Stage’s distinctive artistic approach amplifies historically excluded stories, voices, and faces, centering those who have been most marginalized by our society’s inequitable systems and structures. Over the years, nearly 60 percent of collaborating artists have been members of historically excluded communities, including People of the Global Majority, trans people, non-binary people, disabled people, and immigrants. Mirror Stage continues to believe the power of storytelling holds the key to bringing people together in imagining and embodying a better future, and extends deep gratitude to the artists, audiences, partners, and supporters with whom we have built a community rooted in curiosity, courage, and the belief that stories can change us.