Al Límite Collective was founded in 2020 by nine core members, formerly of The Living Theatre, after years of creating collaboratively. Under The Living, we began to develop our unique focus on cross-border exchange, most notably in Mexico, in the heart of the migrant crisis where our namesake (At The Limit) was born.
Al Límite Collective functions as a non-hierarchical structure, sharing artistic leadership, that strategically implements a fluid devising process inviting workshop participants to become active collaborators. This method of creation has allowed our performances to continuously evolve and transform, serving as a channel for dialogue and instantaneous connections that transcend language barriers and geographical borders.
Al Límite Collective has traveled across the world, from Latin America to the Middle East, from Europe to Asia, to collaborate with artists, community members, refugee and immigrant populations in workshop intensives to devise original performances centered on local social justice issues.
ELECTRIC AWAKENING, which premiered in São Paolo in 2017, marks the incubation for the creation of Al Límite Collective. The production continued evolving into an open vessel/workshop to engage with more participants from different fields. In 2019, the production was brought to Mexico as part of the AL LÍMITE TOUR, along with an experimental art festival in Tijuana addressing the injustices of the US immigration system and mass incarceration of immigrant families and asylum seekers at the border.
In the summer of 2023 a few members of Al Límite Collective brought Electric Awakening to Athens, Greece and taught the show to local and international performers in self-organized space, Embros Theater produced with Institute for Experimental Arts and at the International Festival of Making Theater.
As the world went into lockdown due to the pandemic, Al Límite Collective initiated a multi-media call and response art project, THE LIMINAL ARCHIVE, which welcomed individuals to contribute their creative responses to the tumultuous moment. In the summer of 2020, Al Límite Collective created a site-specific street performance, BROOKLYN IS NOT A SACRIFICE ZONE, to draw attention to the dangerous North Brooklyn fracked gas pipeline running through BIPOC and low income communities, inspired by dozens of interviews with impacted locals and performed directly in the construction sites along the pipeline route. The collective also began staging mobile performances on a four-person operated bicycle platform for spontaneous pop-up theater gliding by passersby for a moment to witness. One such performance
included the construction of a cage that mirrored ICE prison cells, which was biked out to an ICE detention center in Sunset Park, Brooklyn.
In November 2020, invited by White Box - Harlem, Al Límite Collective staged a live immersive reading of Camus’ REVOLT IN ASTURIAS as the response to the unsettling election of the United States. In March 2021, we staged Quiet Us/ Riot Us in the streets and on rooftops throughout Brooklyn as a meditation on grief. In June 2021 we received the Silver Award for The Hear Now Festival. July 2021 we performed a live in person version of Liminal Archive which received rave reviews at the New Ohio Theatre's Ice Factory Festival.