RFK in EKY, The Robert F. Kennedy Performance Project, is a series of public conversations and activities centered around the real-time, site-specific intermedia performance that recreated, on September 9th and 10th 2004, Robert Kennedy’s two-day, 200 mile “poverty tour” of southeastern Kentucky in 1968. An Appalshop project directed by John Malpede.
Every Tuesday from 1 till 3 PM and Friday from 10 AM till noon the Los Angeles Poverty Department conducts workshops at the LAMP community, 527 Crocker Street. The workshops are open for everyone in the Skid Row community.
In February LAPD will start a series of workshops at OPCC: Ocean Park Community Center in Santa Monica: every Monday and Wednesday from 7:30 till 9:30 PM. OPCC's new facility, the OPCC Cloverfield Services Center, houses Daybreak Shelter and Safe Haven. The workshops will culminate in a performance piece that will be presented on the outdoor stage at 18th Street Arts Center during their ArtNight event on May 2, 2009.
THE REAL DEAL, a documentary chronicling the evolution and impact of
the homeless performance group Los Angeles Poverty Department
(L.A.P.D.) and founder John Malpede. Produced by the Halo Group, THE
REAL DEAL was directed by Tom Jones and written by Jones and John
Malpede.
AGENTS & ASSETS is a National Residency
Performance Project which seeks to give voice to the people whose
communities have been most devastated by drugs and counterproductive
drug policies. The text of Agents & Assets is a March 18, 1998,
hearing transcript from the House Permanent Select Committee on
Intelligence. The allegations in question in this session were made in
a 1996 series of articles by journalist Gary Webb in the San Jose
Mercury News, which alleged CIA involvement in crack cocaine
trafficking into the Los Angeles area. With Agents and Assets LAPD puts
day to day experiences in a larger social and political context while
exposing the root causes and policies that help perpetuate poverty
AGENTS & ASSETS has been performed in Los Angeles, Detroit, Cleveland, Utrecht (the Netherlands), Compton, Philadelphia, Baltimore and 3 boroughs of New York.
A&A en Español download the Spanish text about our project in Bolivia
For the summer of 2009 LAPD is preparing a series of Spanish language performances of Agents & Assets in Bolivia with a combined cast of LAPD'ers and Bolivianos. The project brings together victims of the "War On Drugs' in Bolivia and the U.S., people who have experienced first hand damage to their communities, their families, themselves.
Los Angeles Poverty Department was founded in 1985 by director, actor, activist, and writer John Malpede. At its inception, LAPD was the first performance group in the nation made up principally of homeless people. LAPD is dedicated to building community on Skid Row, Los Angeles. Since 1985, the company has offered performance workshops that are free and open to the Skid Row community— partnering with numerous social service and advocacy groups, including SRO Housing, Inc.; LA Community Action Network; The Downtown Women’s Action Coalition; St.Vincent DePaul Center; The Salvation Army’s Women’s and Men’s drug recovery programs; and the Inner City Law Center.
Los Angeles Poverty Department (LAPD) creates performance work that connects lived experience to the social forces that shape the lives and communities of people living in poverty. LAPD is committed to creating high-quality, challenging performances that express the realities, hopes, and dreams of people who live and work in Los Angeles’ Skid Row, and is dedicated to building community and to the artistic and personal development of its members.
March 2, 2007, Washington There are approximately 754,000 homeless
people living in the United States. One in five of the homeless are
children. “On a yearly basis the total number of homeless fluctuates
between 2 and 3 million” says Philip Mangano, the director of the Bush
Administration's Interagency Council on Homelessness. The army of
homeless is growing because the housing costs are rising faster than
benefits and social services. Other causes are domestic violence,
drugs, the closing of mental hospitals and the lack of reintegration
back into the society after imprisonment. Although blacks make up 12 %
of the population in the US, they represent 45% of the homeless. One in
every 6 homeless people is a woman.
Every Tuesday from 1 till 3 PM and Friday from 10 AM till noon the Los Angeles Poverty Department conducts workshops at the 
THE REAL DEAL, a documentary chronicling the evolution and impact of
the homeless performance group Los Angeles Poverty Department
(L.A.P.D.) and founder John Malpede. Produced by the Halo Group, THE
REAL DEAL was directed by Tom Jones and written by Jones and John
Malpede.
