Interviews with three leading community-engaged theatre makers in New Orleans underscore why practices of public storytelling became crucial to the work of artists in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Connecting their work to New Orleans' heritage of African American neighborhood-based cultural performance traditions, O'Neal, Bebelle, and Slie emphasize the importance of cross-racial and cross-generational collaboration for generating theatre practices that are part of a collective struggle for pluralistic, democratic social change.