Company Members

Henriëtte Brouwers

Associate Director and Producer

Henriëtte Brouwers is the Associate Director of the Los Angeles Poverty Department since 2000. She directs, performs, and produces LAPD projects. And she helped create RFK in EKY (2004) a community-based re-enactment of Robert F. Kennedy’s 1968 trip to investigate poverty in Appalachia. Born in the Netherlands, Brouwers was a member of Boal's Theatre of the Oppressed group and studied corporeal mime with Etiènne Décroux in Paris. She founded movement theater ACTA and performed with Grif Theater, Shusaku & Dormu Dance Theatre, Luc Boyer and the National Dutch Opera. After seeing her performance Noordeloos at the StadsSchouwburg in Amsterdam, Philip Arnoult invited her to the Theatre Project in Baltimore and produced a US tour for her which led to performing and teaching at the Highschool for the Arts and Towson UT, UT Knoxville and Touchstone Theatre, PA. 7 Stages director Del Hamilton invited Brouwers as movement director for Blue Monk by Robert Earl Price at the 1996 Olympic Arts Festival in Atlanta, and to perform Jim Grimsley’s The Non and Maya. He directed her solo Malinche, which was performed in NL, Belgium and the US. Based on the legend of La Llorona Brouwers devised the Weeping Women performances at Pomona College and with LAPD. She is featured in Bill Viola’s renowned 'The Passions' series.

Zachary Rutland

Archivist, advocate

Zachary Rutland is an archivist who is interested in helping document and preserve community history and memory, and is a dedicated advocate on housing justice and criminalization issues in Los Angeles. He is a graduate of the UCLA Master of Library Science Program who specialized in media archives and digital preservation from 2018-2020. He was awarded the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Community Archives internship, which allowed him to complete a year-long internship at the Skid Row History Museum and Archive for the Los Angeles Poverty Department. As a part of his continued work in this archive, he has helped process, catalogue and digitize photographic and paper collections while providing insight on other archival projects. Zach currently lives in Koreatown and there he has volunteered for a community organization called Koreatown For All.

Jaiye Kamson

Performer, Archival Assistant

Jaiye is a multimedia artist who has performed with the LA Poverty Department since December 2023, when the 'Welcome to the Covid Hotel' performance was being developed, and she performed in Walk The Talk 2024. She also provides support as an archive assistant in the Skid Row History & Museum Arch

Stephanie Bell

Performer, Singer

Stephanie Bell has been an actress, singer and motivational force with LAPD since the early 90’s. She performed in Pascal Rambert’s 'Race' in 1999, a rooftop collaboration between LAPD and Cal State University-Los Angeles. After an absence due to severe health problems, Stephanie again energized the group with her deep and strong, and occasionally hilarious performances as part of the cast of 'A (micro) History of World Economics, Danced' (2013), which was performed at Pershing Square and many LAPD productions including, 'Chasing Monsters From Under The Bed', 'Walk The Talk', 'Red Beard - Red Beard', 'What Fuels Development?', our 2019 production 'I Fly!' and 'The New Compassionate Downtown' (2021), The Resilience Monologues (2023) and Walk the Talk 2016, 2018, 2000, 2022 and 2024. Stephanie has introduced a number of performers and first time performers into the LAPD mix. "I've been with L.A.P.D. since dooms day. Love working with our people in the community."

Iron G. Donato

Performer

Iron joined LAPD in 2019 and played the part of Jose Huizar in 'Amazon Comes to Skid Row' (2020). He performed in 'Walk the Talk' (2020, 2022, 2024), 'The New Compassionate Downtown' (2021) and the Resilience Monologues (2023). He is also member of Urban Voices Project. “Actor, singer, poet, artist, dancer. I’m Iron Angel, I’m a romancer, I cast magical spells with creativity. It gives me my dignity and all those under my spell humanity.”

Pamela Miller

Chief Operating Officer

Pamela Miller was named LAPD Chief Operating Officer in January 2024. She has been hanging around LAPD since 2007, when she was so inspired by her first encounter of us—a Come Together event—she wrote us the next day begging to volunteer. She later began freelancing for us as a development consultant/grant writer, and continued, off and on, for the better part of 10 years. Pamela’s fundraising experience spans 17 years at nonprofit arts organizations in New York City and Los Angeles, including Queens Museum, Film Independent, the Colburn School, and Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc), where she served as Co-Director of Development. Prior to her fundraising career, Pamela had a 20-year career in magazine journalism. She held senior and executive level editorial positions at Self; ESPN, The Magazine; Glamour; InTouch Weekly; and OK! Pamela’s one-and-only claim to fame as an artist is a garbled-but-heartfelt performance of “Amazing Grace” on harmonica at the 2017 Festival for All Skid Row Artists as a tribute to her dear friend Kevin Michael Key.

Clancey Cornell

Walk the Talk Archival Project Manager

Clancey, has worked in the Skid Row community since 2015, when she began collaborating on grassroots arts programming at LA Poverty Department’s Skid Row History Museum and Studio 526. She graduated from the Global Liberal Studies Program at New York University in 2015 with a concentration in Archival Photography and Cultural Memory and a second major in Spanish. She earned the award for Best Overall Thesis for “Excavating the Photo-Archive: Exploring Memory and Healing with the Creation of Radical Archives.” Her interest in archives began in Buenos Aires, where she facilitated the recovery of a damaged archive for the Association of Graphic Reporters for the Republic of Argentina. She has since engaged in a variety of archival projects in Argentina and Los Angeles, focusing on archiving as activist practice to narrate histories that would otherwise go unexplored. Clancey was honored in Walk The Talk 2024 for her work in the Skid Row community.

Tom Grode

Performer, Writer, Docent

Tom Grode is a Skid Row resident with numerous credits for casting films and television series. He moved to Skid Row in 2015 and has performed with LAPD in 'What Fuels Development?' (2016), 'Walk the Talk' (since 2016), 'The Back 9' (2017), 'I Fly!' (2019), 'The New Compassionate Downtown' (2021) and the Resilience Monologues. For 'The Back 9' Tom performed and contributed to the script as a writer and he traveled with LAPD for community residencies in Philadelphia and Minneapolis. Tom has been active in the Skid Row Community with the Skid Row Design Collective, the Skid Row Neighborhood Council Formation Committee, the Skid Row Community Improvement Coalition, and is involved in numerous other dialogues that include ongoing consultation with the Skid Row Action Plan. As a member of LA Poverty Department Tom also is a docent at the Skid Row History Museum and Archive.

Anthony Taylor

Performer, Writer

Anthony - ToneTone - Taylor was a contributing writer and performed in LAPD's 'State of Incarceration' (2010), 'Walk the Talk', 'Biggest Recovery Community Anywhere', 'Chasing Monsters From Under The Bed' (2015) ,'What Fuels Development?' (2016) and 'The New Compassionate Downtown' (2021). LAPD has inspired him to pursue an acting career. He has completed three years as a student at the Actors Academy at LA City College. In 2018 and 2019 he co-facilitated a 16-week series of LAPD workshops working with re-entry programs for people coming out of California State Prisons at the Weingart Center.

Richard Volis

Performer

Richard started performing with LAPD in "The Covid Hotel Welcomes You to the Future'. He is a playwright and director known for adapting personal stories into educational films and plays. He founded the “Acting Out” Workshop to empower individuals through creative expression. One notable production is "B. Osten's Blog “. He holds degrees in Film and Media Studies from the University of Massachusetts – Lowell and Cinema/TV from Los Angeles City College.

Henry Michael Apodaca

Media Archivist

Henry Michael Apodaca, Media Archivist, Skid Row History Museum, served as the 2018-2019 UCLA-Mellon Community Archives Intern at the Skid Row History Museum and was recently hired to continue his work with the organization. With undergraduate training in anthropology, and fifteen years public teaching experience, Henry is an educational specialist turned archivist, who received his MLIS degree from UCLA in June 2019. Henry’s interests include locating media archival professionalization on the landscape of community archives by triangulating human, financial, and technological resources that motivate decision-making processes towards archival best practices. Additionally, he is interested in ontological design(s) and epistemic justice that nuance traditional notions of cognitive authority represented in archival records. He is also an avid record collector.

Sara Fetherolf

Public Programs and Engagement Specialist

Sara Fetherolf is an ACLS Leading Edge postdoctoral fellow, working as the Public Programs and Engagement Specialist at the Skid Row Museum & Archive. Sara is especially interested in how public history intersects with personal histories, and how both public and individual knowledge can be communicated through art. An educator, editor, poet, and storyteller, she is the author of Via Combusta (winner of the New American Press Poetry Prize 2021), a poetry collection that explores personal experiences of intermittent homelessness as a queer youth. She has also written prize-winning short fiction, and text for song cycles and short operas that have been performed around the country, among other projects. She has a PhD in Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Southern California.

Lorinda Hawkins Smith

Performer, Writer, Open Mic MC

Lorinda performed in L:A Poverty Dept.'s UTOPIA /dystopia at REDCAT in 2007, she was the MC of the Festival for All Skid Row Artists in 2022 and 2023, and since 2023 Lorinda hosts the Open Mic evenings, every last Friday of the month at 5pm at the Skid Row History Museum & Archive. Lorinda transitioned from being homeless in Skid Row to housed and completed an MBA from the University of Phoenix. She’s an actor, singer, video maker, author, playwright, and advocate against domestic violence.

Lorraine Morland

Performer, Singer

Lorraine first tipped her toes into acting with the LAPD crew at the Creative Thinking Project at MOCA in 2019. Her first LAPD performance was 'Walk the talk' (2020) and the she performed in Walk the Talk 2022 and 2024. She performed in 'The New Compassionate Downtown' (2021) and The Resilience Monologues (2023). “I am Lorraine I am a singer. I sing from a place in my heart, a homeless woman that found her way back home by the grace of God.”

Leyla Martinez

Performer, Dancer

Leyla is proud of her roots and her Cuban community in Skid Row. She is a salsa dancer and started acting with LAPD in 2019. She performed in 'Amazon Comes to Skid Row' (2020), 'Walk the Talk' (2020, 2022, 2024), 'The New Compassionate Downtown' (2021 and The Covid Hotel welcomes u to the Future". “This quiet time made me think more about myself. Therefor I made some plans to save money to fix my backpain. Wow, you will see me dancing salsa like a pro!”

Diane Prozeller

Visual Artist, Performer

Diane first showed her beautiful paintings at the festival for All Skid Row Artists in 2017 and exhibited her works in the “Nick Paul & Diane Prozeller” exhibition at the Skid Row History Museum and Archive (Nov. 2019 – Jan. 2020). She joined the actor’s group shortly after and performed in 'The New Compassionate Downtown' (2021) and Walk The Talk 2020 and 2022. " We’re all deserving of mercy and compassion."

In memoriam

Our dear friend and collaborator and Key LAPD staff member KevinMichael Key has passed on.  He died on Wednesday, July 19, 2017, surrounded by his loving children, brother, grandchildren and friends.

Kevin is a big and loving presence in the Skid Row community, working as an advocate with UCEPP (United Coalition East Prevention Project), as a community liaison for the diabetes program at JWCH Community Clinic and an important member of Critical Resistance.  He’d also worked with LA Community Action Network (LA CAN) and been a 2 term member of the Downtown Neighborhood Council.  He was one of the community leaders in the campaign to defeat a liquor license in the New Genesis Hotel, and that organizing victory became the subject of LAPD’s 2016 production “What Fuels Development?”

Through his many involvements Kevin was an amazing effective connector in the community, coolly ambling down the street he operated at a speed faster than internet–and louder.  He’d boom out a shout to somebody across the street and get things done.  Or as he’d say, “when everyone’s out there is pumpin’ and fakin’, KevinMichael is smoken’ and shaken”.  Kevin loved Skid Row cause it was the “New York part of LA”.  A former public defender Kevin was at ease approaching and if necessary getting in the face of people in suits, but his main love was striking up a conversation with anyone on any street in Skid Row.   Of course, he loved people wherever he was.  LAPD was in El Alto Bolivia, about to do “Agentes y Activos” our Spanish language show about the futility of the war on drugs.  El Alto is a shanty town of over a million people that hovers over the city of La Paz.  Before the show, Kevin went out in to the plaza, and with super limited Spanish approached families, adults and children, giving them fliers and a big smile.  “Agentes y Activos, teatro, gratis, aqui en quince minutos”.  Fearlessness enabled by love.  When we played the same show in a prison, afterwards one of the inmates referred to him as “the big Cubano”,  because of his accent.  We all felt this was a big coup—that his accent was recognizable as anything in particular, as he’d learned his lines phonetically.

KevinMichaelKey3

Kevin was proud to say, “Skid Row saved my life.  I got clean and sober on Skid Row.”  And he helped a lot of people on the road to recovery.  Never preachy, but always warm, disarming and funny, Kevin was able to convince people that they could do better for themselves, get out from under their pain.  We were reading an article from the New York Times claiming that Del Rey Beach was a big location for recovery, because there are all sorts of expensive programs there and people come there, go through the programs and then stay in the community.  We laughed and decided that’s nothing compared to Skid Row.  We decided to make “Biggest Recovery Community Anywhere”, which we did.

When  he received his cancer diagnosis, we went from rehearsal to the sidewalk outside his apartment at the Yankee Hotel for a group hug that lasted 15 minutes —as sirens blared and fire trucks pealed off from Skid Row firehouse #9.  At the end of the hug Kevin looked at us all, Henriëtte, Tone-Tone, Christina and myself and said, “From now on only love.”

We’re carrying your love with us my brother.  We love you Kevin.  Only love.
John Malpede

Linda Harris, performer and singer.

Linda was a singer and actress who loved to dance.  She worked with LAPD since 2009, performing in Let’s Go, State of Incarceration, 3 Walk the Talk projects and Biggest Recovery Community Anywhere.  She traveled to the Netherlands to rehearse and perform HOSPITAL with Wunderbaum.  She was an inspiration, singing her favorite songs at the Festival For All Skid Row Artists.  Linda’s optimism, her love for her husband Robert and her community inspired us all to stay positive and never give up.  As she used to say: “I love myself and life is beautiful.”   Linda also performed in The Soloist and appeared in the documentary Lost Angels.  She was a member of the choir of the Central City Community Church.  Linda Harris died in the summer of 2016 and we miss her.

Lee Maupin, actor and Skid Row resident who has worked with LAPD since 2014. He performed in ‘Walk the Talk’, ‘Red Beard – Red Beard’, ‘What Fuels Development?’, ‘The Back 9’, ‘I Fly!’ ,’The New Compassionate Downtown’ (2021) and the ‘Resilience Monologues’ and Lee did James Brown at many Festivals for All Skid Row Artists. In addition, he has worked with Cornerstone Theater Company on ‘Love on San Pedro’ and the ‘California Tempest.’ “My name is Lee Maupin. I’ve been working with Los Angeles Poverty Department for more than 10 years, knocking down doors and turning out shows!” Lee passed away on December 27, 2024.