Michelle Hensley describes the motivation behind starting her theater company, Ten Thousand Things, which takes award-winning professional theater - Shakespeare, Greek Tragedy, Brecht - to audiences who live on the margins in shelters and prisons and immigrant centers as well as to a savvy theater-going public. She highlights the discoveries the company has made about theater by doing it this way, and she makes a strong case for the radical and positive change that can happen to any human endeavor when inclusion becomes a priority.

Michelle Hensley is the artistic director of Ten Thousand Things, where she has directed and produced over 60 tours of award-winning drama to nontraditional audiences in prisons, shelters and housing projects as well as the general public. Many of these productions make the local critics' Top Ten Lists. A McKnight Theater Fellow, Michelle was named the 2012 Star Tribune's Best Artistic Director. She received the Francesca Primus Prize from the American Theater Critics Association for outstanding contribution to the American theater by a female artist. She is a founding member of the Minnesota Theater Alliance, serves on the boards of the Theater Communications Group and Howlround, and in March published her book, "All The Lights On: Reimagining Theater with Ten Thousand Things."

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx