Los Angeles Poverty Department and Asian Arts Initiative are presenting “What Fuels Development?”
Friday, November 4: 7:30pm and Saturday, November 5: 3:00pm and 7:30pm at Broad Street Ministry, 315 S. Broad St., Philadelphia, PA 19107.
For tickets, visit asianartsinitiative.org/event/what-fuels-development
The devised theater performance piece, ‘What Fuels Development?’ is based on the true story of a development struggle, in which residents of Skid Row in Los Angeles, including Los Angeles Poverty Department members, organized to successfully appeal a non-profit developers attempt to put an alcohol-serving restaurant in a residential hotel housing formerly homeless people. Many of the hotels residents are in recovery, or actively struggling with addiction and mental illness. Skid Row residents appealed the granting of the zoning variance and organized to testify at the zoning commission, and collectively their words created a change of heart in the commissioners.
Travis Diehl, writing for ARTFORUM described What Fuels Development? as “an impassioned dramatization of a true life fight….a specific episode to counter the abstract surety of gentrification.”
What Fuels Development? is directed by John Malpede and performed by Los Angeles Poverty Department (LAPD), the first arts organization in Skid Row and the first performing group in the country comprised mostly of homeless or formerly homeless people.
What Fuels Development? is a National Performance Network (NPN) Creation Fund Project co-commissioned by Asian Arts Initiative in partnership with Pangea World Theater, Armory Center for the Arts and NPN. For more information: www.npnweb.org. What Fuels Development? was developed with grant support to LAPD from the National Endowment for the Arts-Theater.
