Grantee Database
The Unusual Suspects Theatre Company
Grant Year
2024-25
Grant Program
Creative Youth Development
Award Amount
$16,203.00
Project Description
With support from the California Arts Council, The Unusual Suspects Theatre Company (USTC) will deliver three total 10-week Youth Theatre Conservatory performance residencies across three arts-poor, Title 1 school sites. These after-school residencies will provide 75+ LA County high-school students the opportunity to create and perform original plays based on their personal experiences and shared culture. Each residency will provide an intensive, youth-driven creative process that combines a standards-based, healing-informed, and culturally-responsive curriculum with deep mentorship to address risk factors that threaten the healthy development of youth in under-resourced communities, including 98% Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC). Each residency will culminate in 1-2 public youth performances witnessed by the participants’ peers, families, neighbors, and school administrators. Funds will support key USTC staff and Teaching Artists (TAs) who implement the program at each site.
Organization Summary
USTC believes that the future of theatre lives in Los Angeles, and has developed a 5-year plan (2024-2028) to increase the quality and reach of our programs. We are adding partners and updating curricula to better connect with and meet the needs of today’s young people and provide the best possible platform for learning and creating theatre-arts. Through cross-training services and deepening partnerships, USTC also strives to support equity in disenfranchised communities holistically, promoting systemic change beyond our own work. For example, USTC is a founding member of the Arts for Healing and Justice Network (AHJN), an interdisciplinary collaborative of 19 arts organizations working to build resiliency and wellness, eliminate recidivism, and transform the juvenile-justice system.
Programs include:
YOUTH THEATRE CONSERVATORY: Our flagship program offers experiential theatre-arts education and mentoring for high school students via two sequential after-school residencies (playwriting then performance) across 22 weeks wherein youth collaborate to create and perform original plays based on their lived experiences and shared culture.
YOUTH THEATRE RESIDENCY: Standards-based workshops in-and-out of the classroom (K-8th) that help students build teamwork, communication, and socialization skills.
VOICES FROM INSIDE PROGRAM (VIP): Provided in partnership with AHJN, our site-adaptive VIP offers healing-informed, standards-based theatre-arts education and mentoring for incarcerated, justice-involved, and other trauma-impacted minors.
NEIGHBORHOOD VOICES: Engages intergenerational community residents (ages 11-65+) in creating and performing an original play in an intensive 12-week residency. Performances often feature lively post-show community discussions.
THEATRE CAMP: Offered in partnership with LAUSD and PUSD, this program provides K-8 students with foundational theatre skills during school breaks.
THEATRE & CULTURE ACCESS PROGRAM: Free field trips introduce students and families to professional theatre across Los Angeles County.
YOUTH JOURNALISM FELLOWSHIP: Provides emerging writers (ages 15-25) with professional critical writing instruction/mentoring and opportunities to publish original pieces, in partnership with Stage Raw.
Organization
The Unusual Suspects Theatre Company
Address
300 S. Raymond Ave., Suite 9
Pasadena
91105
County
Los Angeles
Region
South – Los Angeles & Orange
Website
Congressional District
California's 28th congressional district
State Assembly District
District 41
State Senate District
District 25
