Chuck Swanson, Executive Director of Hancher, shares some of the recent and future program initiatives of Hancher. The past several years of presenting without a building have given the Hancher staff an opportunity to think more creatively on how to present their work. Chuck talked a little about the new Hancher building that’s to be finished in 2016, saying that Hancher is more than a building: “Hancher is a mindset.”
Swanson focused on the projects Hancher coordinated, all involving immense collaboration between different people from different fields, such as artists and actors working with medical students and engineers. The goal of Hancher is to present difficult ideas in creative ways to encourage understanding to a wide audience. An example Swanson described was a production focusing on Alzheimer’s awareness called The Broken Chord that Hancher presented last spring. Collaborating with Working Group Theatre, the people involved looked at research and personal stories to create this work. Other projects focused on flood awareness and bullying awareness. “Hancher is one of the largest classrooms on campus,” Swanson said, and it seems the most creative and effective one too.