About — Southern Exposure

Our Mission

Southern Exposure is a unique performing arts program with a mission to celebrate the culture of the Chattanooga community by cultivating and mentoring diverse artists, presenters, and audiences in an eclectic, creative environment. We generate inclusive experiences and challenging conversations to connect audiences and artists.

Southern Exposure’s work is driven by the transformative power of oral history and storytelling and by a strong belief that social justice cannot be achieved without deep listening and learning from those marginalized, silenced, and ignored.

We are dedicated to making space for ethics-based oral history stories that might not otherwise be heard by creating a platform for individuals and communities to speak up and share their personal experiences. Through our programming, we work with communities to ensure that:

Voices of marginalized and silenced communities are centered in narrative contexts.
Practitioners use ethics-driven methodologies to gather, document, and perform narratives.
We use a participatory process to transform narratives into poetic monologues performed on stage.

Our Roots

The Beginning

Since 2011, Southern Exposure has amplified the voices of hundreds of individuals from marginalized and silenced communities, including former coal miners and millworkers, domestics, justice-involved individuals, LGBTQ+ persons, individuals living with mental and physical disabilities, elders, and many more. In 2020 the organization grew to include one-on-one monologue performance coaching for storytellers and actors to bring oral histories to life on the theatrical stage.

This type of drama falls under the umbrella of Applied Theater to facilitate social change. It emerged from what was known as educational drama and theatre, as practiced in the United States and the UK in the mid-twentieth century, and transformed under influences from Paulo Freire, Augusto Boal, performance studies, globalization, postcolonialism, postmodernism, and the work of critical theorists who challenged assumptions about privilege, culture, gender, race, and class.

Applied theatre, as it appears on the page and stage, is dedicated to a democratic process, as well as the product of social justice, to impact the lives of people within their communities. As such, it raises awareness within communities about various personal, social, and political realities.

Our Team

Peggy Douglas

ORAL HISTORY DIRECTOR
Dr. Peggy Douglas received the 2022 Tennessee Arts Commission’s Individual Artist Fellowship Award for playwrighting. She conducts workshops on persona and ekphrastic poetry and artful storytelling. She has written and produced eight rhythm-driven plays of poetic monologues with musical interludes where the sheer thrill of language is the dominant force behind the performance.
Peggy’s work focuses on the common theme of her Tennessee roots—struggle and survival. Likewise, she is drawn to the strength and hope of our ancestors, as evidenced by the cultural connections of Southern music, food, family, and relationships. To celebrate these connections, Peggy gives a voice to her people—a voice of truth, beauty, and hope.
In 2020 and 2021, she collaborated with WUTC public radio to bring her poetic monologue plays, Southern Exposure and Steel Toes and Hired Hands, to radio audiences. Here is a response from one of the listeners, “When I heard Southern Exposure on WUTC, the hair shot up on the back of my neck; how it hit me– the change in tone and pace, and the way that language can become, for a moment, more like music; something rich and resonant rather than a means of reciting information.”
Anne Swedberg

PERFORMANCE DIRECTOR
Dr. Anne K. Swedberg, Assistant Professor of Theatre (M.F.A. University of Louisville, Ph.D. the University of Wisconsin-Madison) teaches acting, voice, Shakespeare, and Introduction to Theatre classes. She is a Designated Linklater Teacher and is a member of the final cohort of teachers to train with Kristin Linklater in Scotland. Her research interests include practices and history of community-based theatre; actor training and theory; voice and speech technique, training, and theory; and trauma-informed somatic practices.
She delights in coaching and directing actors and seeing words blossom into performance. She is especially passionate about community-based performance and the co-creation of new work.
Jann Borta Sullivan

ADMINISTRATIVE COORDINATOR
Jann has volunteered in numerous areas, including helping to organize the pottery shop and bowl-making at the Chattanooga Area Food Bank’s annual fundraiser. She dedicated five years to founding and creating the Center for Mindful Living, a non-profit organization that nurtures practices that lead to joy, balance, and compassion.
In 2017, Jann became a member of the Ed Johnson Committee, a grassroots organization working towards educating and creating a memorial to honor the life of Ed Johnson, who was lynched in 1906. After its completion in 2022, she moved on and continues to work with CALEB’s Criminal Justice Task Force, working on various pretrial issues and their impact, especially on the poor. She is also a compassionate companion for “Can We Talk,” a community open mic for trauma healing.
As a modern dance performer in her 20s in Chicago, Jann is now thrilled to work with Southern Exposure to support artists in writing, acting, performance, and whatever else arises in this magical world.