Grandberry turns IDEAS into action

Having a plan is one thing, but for Northern Sky Theater’s Lachisa Grandberry, it was action that allowed you to see more authentic stories in Door County. While some of their inclusion efforts began as early as 2017, Northern Sky Theater’s IDEAS task force met for the first time last year to discuss how inclusion, diversity, equity, and access solutions could be part of the organization’s future mission. Lachrisa Grandberry has been there from the beginning, since joining Northern Sky Theater over six years ago. She has sought to raise awareness of other Black, Indigenous, and artists of color (BIPOC) in Door County, and became the organization’s director of Nurturing Original Voices and Artists (NOVA) programming in 2022. Since the official launch of IDEAS in Action in 2023, Northern Sky Theater has hosted readings of plays by BIPOC authors, updated its Land Acknowledgement to reflect the region’s Native American roots, and partnered with Door County Summer Horizons to bring more diversity to its summer staff. Grandberry is proud of what they’ve accomplished in such a short amount of time.

After her musical Sunflowered achieved groundbreaking success at Northern Sky in 2019 as the first reading of a script by Black authors, Grandberry hopes IDEAS in Action can bring BIPOC plays to the stage in the years to come. The second musical she co-wrote, Girls on Sand, premieres at Northern Sky next month.