Plain Language & Teils Studio

Teils Studio presents Plain Language, an episodic series and video-based collage of underground creatives, workers, and communities. This video series aims to broaden available cultural narratives by bolding local stories and everyday life in the Philadelphia area. Plain Language will premiere at the 2026 Collective Futures festival. Come see your friends, neighbours and interesting strangers talk about the little things. Come see that one intersection. Leave spilling back into it all.

After writing, directing, and producing several community-led theatre productions, Shay Overstone founded Teils Studio in Philadelphia as an extension of these collaborative practices. Teils Studio is a rotating collective of multi-disciplinary collaborators working across experimental film, theatre, and performance. 

Through video work, live presentations, and public screenings, the studio explores local stories and everyday life as cultural material, creating alternative narratives outside mainstream media. 

Across formats, Teils Studio documents and archives intersections of community and place. The star isn’t north, it’s in the sky.