With the support of the California Arts Council, Slow Theatre will provide theater arts education to incarcerated youth in Butte County. Building on our previous work in juvenile hall, this project will incorporate curriculum that helps students create theater work based on personal experiences and issues related to their environments.
Slow Theatre’s longest running program is the The Butcher Shop, a free outdoor theater festival that began as a backyard show 29 years ago in the summer of 1989. Conceived by Denver and Dylan Latimer and Casey Simpson, it grew out of Chico’s homegrown theatrical, visual and musical talent. In 2009, many of the original players—some now working in Los Angeles, New York, and Portland—reunited and added fresh Chico talent to create the current Butcher Shop event. In 2018, The Butcher Shop celebrated its tenth consecutive production, where over 1600 audience members attended the event.
In 2017-18, Slow Theatre partnered with Butte County Office of Education, to teach two ten week sessions of storytelling workshops to the Table Mountain School students residing in the juvenile hall. This curriculum was funded in part by California Arts Council. Slow Theatre plans to continue and build this relationship with BCOE to serve this population of at-risk youth in Butte County.

