For 20 years, About…Productions’ Young Theaterworks program has served highest-risk youth in Los Angeles public schools with high impact, project-based learning that improves academic achievement and creative engagement. Strengthening students literacy practice, and collaboration and communication skills, the program also empowers them to become stewards of their community’s history.
“The Young Theaterworks program has enriched our students’ learning with culturally relevant, responsive, and sustaining experiences which embody some of the best principles of secondary education. It is easy to recognize the transformative and empowering effects of the program on many of them, including how it changes their future for the better. Being able to offer this type of creative programming that engages students on a personal and academic level, and makes them look forward to each school day, directly fulfills our mission to empower them to take ownership of their own learning and become a positive force in the community.”
In honor of the program’s 20th Birthday, you can change the life of a deserving highest-risk student.
Simply donate $20 and invite one friend to join the Squad.
Residencies
Intensive Young Theaterworks residencies are based on connecting youth to significant elders in the community and/or content from our professional original theaterworks. Over 20 sessions, students collaboratively create short plays. In culminating staged readings, professional actors perform the plays alongside willing students for the public, their peers, and school community. In 2020-21 we will pivot our Through the Ages intergenerational residency to online learning.
workshops
The newest addition to the Young Theaterworks program is the 6-week online workshop, Art of the Monologue, which will serve students from four public high schools in East Los Angeles and Pasadena who are disproportionally affected by school closures caused by COVID-19. We are also excited to continue our partnership with the City of Bell Gardens by providing after-school workshops in conjunction with Adobe Punk (currently in development).
“As a 17-year-old girl in East L.A., I never thought I’d have this great experience. I learned so much from this class and the one thing that I will never forget is that you taught me how to be confident.”
Support a student in need. Become a part of the Squad by donating $20 and inviting a friend.
young theaterworks history
Click through the slideshow for a visual history of our Young Theaterworks program.
i: Witness, A Chicano Legacy Project play
Hundreds of East L.A. highest-risk students have been engaged through About…Productions’ Chicano Legacy Project. They’ve mined their community’s rich cultural and political history by interviewing significant Chicano elders, writing plays, and sharing the stage with professional actors to present their original work to their peers and the public. In 2017, these students had a brand-new opportunity to explore and share their Chicano Legacy and for the first time in the history of Young Theaterworks, created and co-produced a full production premiere of their original work, I:WITNESS!
video excerpt from 2017 Young Theaterworks Pasadena culmination
This program is made possible by the generous support of our sponsors:
