With support from the California Arts Council, TheatreWorkers Project will continue to partner with the Center for Engagement, Service and the Public Good to provide a rehabilitative, literacy-building theatre program for system-impacted student-members of California State University LA’s Project Rebound program upholding their mission of reducing recidivism and contributing to safer and stronger communities. The theatre program will provide an opportunity for the students to explore and reframe their personal narratives and will culminate in a recorded poetic audio piece written and performed by the participants.
Using theatre to illuminate social and political issues has been our goal since 1983 when founder Susan Franklin Tanner was awarded a CAC Artist in Communities grant to create theatre with unemployed steelworkers in southeast LA. With that grant, Tanner founded TheatreWokers Project (TWP) and pioneered a form of documentary theatre where the participants, supported by professional artists, provided the content and became the storyteller/actors. TWP went on the create theatre projects with and/or about shipbuilders, meat packers, longshoremen, critical nurses and Latinx immigrant workers. Over time, our focus expanded to include collaborating with community-based re-entry programs serving the formerly incarcerated and prison programs serving incarcerated youth and adults, workshops for community and university medical centers, and providing classical and contemporary theatre experiences for youth through ongoing school residencies and performances. COVID-related restrictions have prompted us to embrace and incorporate filmed performance collages, virtual program delivery and correspondence courses as centerpieces of our programming.

