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.
Ongoing: "Employing His Telepathic Powers, Mr. Smallman Fights for Jusitce in the Injustice System"
theater workshops at UCEPP space on the corner of Stanford and 6th
Street: 804 East 6th Street, Los Angeles CA 90021. Every Tuesday from 7
till 9 PM and Saturdays from 2 till 5 PM.
January 23: "Arts in the One World 2010 Conference" 7 -10 PM, at the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts), located at 24700 McBean Pkwy, Valencia, CA, 91355. Los Angeles Poverty Department will show the movie of the perfromance RED BEARD/RED BEARD, made in Gennevilliers, Paris 2008, at theatre2gennevilliers. Followed by a discussion and presentation about our work.
January 25:
"Making the Case for Skid Row Culture" from 5:30 to
7:30pm, in Garden Room A of the Japanese AmericanCultural andCommunity Center, 244 South San Pedro
Street (between 2nd and 3rd Streets). Dinner will be served. (More precisely:
there will be dinner--buffet style). This past June Los Angeles Poverty Department and
The Urban Institute held three group conversations to discuss the role of arts and culture in the Skid Row
neighborhood.Insights and ideas
from these meetings went into a research paper,"Making the Case for Skid Row Culture." The paper will soon be published on the Animating Democracy
Initiative web page of Americans for the Arts. Everybody
participating expressed a desire for continued exchange and, as we said at the
time, a report back on our findings would provide an occasion to share a meal
and continue the discussion. RSVP only.
2010 / 2011
* the SKID ROW WALK OF FAME an outdoor Public Art Project, honoring the community on Skid Row. With Community Redevelopment Agency, now LAPD is
creating a “Skid Row Walk of Fame,” permanent public artworks with images
of neighborhood residents whose visionary actions have contributed
to re-knitting the social fabric of Skid Row.
* WALK THE TALK is a peripatetic performance (with brass
band) that travels through Skid Row with performances at each Walk of Fame
artwork to celebrate the achievements of neighborhood visionaries, to
bring the history of the community to life and keep it alive. All the
people whose stories will be told in the artworks will be told in the
performance
WALK THE TALK and WALK OF FAME build upon our work over the past
two years. During the project "UTOPIA / dystopia", we
created events that engaged community brain-power to identify initiatives
and people who had made positive contributions to
the neighborhood. We invited some of the most widely recognized social visionaries
from the neighborhood, and they were asked to speak about other people and
initiatives that they valued. The input led to the installation, “Skid Row
History Museum,” at The Box Gallery, which included more performance and public
conversation events, to solicit further community input.
Watch the video explaining the SKID ROW HISTORY MUSEUM / WALK THE TALK
* HISTORY OF INCARCERATION, a new performance project
Skid Row Los Angeles is a
special place and vortex for a number of thorny social issues that confront the
entire nation. The US has the second highest rate of incarceration in the
world: second only to China. Skid Row LA has a disproportionate number of
citizens who have first hand knowledge of the criminal justice system, whether
their experience comes only through minor infractions such as jaywalking or
because when they are released from state penitentiaries with $200 release
money, they are directed to Skid Row- with the largest concentration of low
cost housing in LA County. HISTORY OF INCARCERATION will consider the purpose
of incarceration, whether it is primarily intended to punish or whether it is
intended to rehabilitate and redeem.
(50
percent of the jaywalking tickets written in the entire city of Los Angeles are
written in the 52 square blocks of Skid Row. And because many people cannot
afford to pay the $100 fines they often get sent to jail for outstanding warrants
when they are stopped again.)
2010: LAPD will bring artistic director Sjoerd
Wagenaar anddirector Floris van Delft to LA to participate in History
of Incareration and Walk the Talk.
2011: PeerGrouP will bring LAPD to Drente, the Netherlands, for a residency project about the Cold War.
PeerGrouP en locationtheater PeerGrouP is a group of people that have the same goal in mind.
PeerGrouP
has a steady core group of coworkers. For each project this inspiring
core group is expanded with freelance-specialists, from in- or outside
the Netherlands. - PeerGrouP has made important contributions to the development of ‘site specific theatre’ especially in the northern three provinces of the Netherlands. The PeerGroup makes performances in barns or in the open air, on schips and in abandoned commercial buildings. Locations that matter, places with a history. They are a source of stories for the pepole who live and work there. Besides social, moral and emotional themes architecture and technical possiblities are building stones for a location performance.
In 2005 we build our very own Strawcastle! The Strawcastle is a remarkeble project with contemporary design functions as a theatre for Agricultural and rural related subjects. Since then we premiered seven plays, several debates and many picknick’s.
In 2005 we build our very own Strawcastle! The Strawcastle is a remarkeble project with contemporary design functions as a theatre for Agricultural and rural related subjects. Since then we premiered seven plays, several debates and many picknick’s.
Upcoming Projects