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Mission Statement

Cleveland Public Theatre's mission is to raise consciousness and nurture compassion through groundbreaking performances and life-changing education programs.

CPT develops new, adventurous work; and nurtures Northeastern Ohio artists—particularly those whose work is inventive, intelligent, and socially conscious.

CPT's acclaimed education programs engage communities in devising new works that speak to contemporary issues, and empower participants to work for positive change in our community.

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2026-2027 Artistic Statement

EVER EMERGING

We spiral in growth.

Physically, we open new doors, new pathways, new flow—architecture that says “welcome.”  We open our façade, too, revealing more about who and what lives inside these walls. Dare I say, “sacred walls?”

Sacred because of who has walked these halls and treaded these boards.

Because of the arguments, laughter, grief, song, risk, failure and discovery.

Because these spaces have witnessed change—not theoretical change, but real change, in real lives.

Yes, a spiral of growth where people gather. Create. Question. Celebrate. Encounter one another.

An antidote. A healing balm. A spark. A provocation.

CPT is ever renewing our commitment to becoming even more a theatre with purpose: a tool of democracy, a civic necessity, a human right; indeed, a true Public Good.

A public good to become who we might yet be—as individuals: free, informed, curious, uplifted; as affinity communities: bold, proud, and rooted; and widening out to a region of people: engaged together in dynamic dialogue—listening, questioning, imagining, dis-agreeing, creating, and connecting across differences.

You may think this is naïve, but I tell you it is true. Not because I can imagine it, but
because I have witnessed it repeatedly in this very place.

Among the artists who call CPT home. Among young people discovering capacities they did not know they possessed. Among neighbors entering a room with one understanding and leaving with another.

And for more than four decades, Cleveland Public Theatre has not merely believed that possibility lives at the intersection of artistic risk and community, we have witnessed the evidence.

And as we spiral in growth, the buildings may never really be finished, yet, neither will the art, and neither will the community. Before one cycle closes another has already begun. This is in the very DNA of Cleveland Public Theatre. This is in the heart of every artistic community, we are never “arrived”—we are ever emerging.

Raymond Bobgan, CPT Executive Artistic Director