Started in 2001, TheaterWorks! creates direct access to theater-making for our working constituents. It is a multi-week playwriting and performance class that culminates in a final performance of the participants' original plays in an Off-Broadway theater with professional actors.
TheaterWorks! is offered to corporations and unions as a resource for their employees and members, and each class is tailored to the specific needs of the host organization. Since its inception, the program has partnered with 10 unions, Cornell University ILR, CUNY, and Climate Jobs Institute, and has been offered in bilingual sessions.
To find out how to offer TheaterWorks! at your union or group, please contact us at info@theworkingtheater.org
Goals of Theaterworks!
To combat the sense of alienation many workers feel towards their jobs by providing them with a non-threatening creative environment in which to explore the meaning of what they do
To teach creative problem solving
To foster self-expression
To help engender personal and long-term connections to the arts
Theaterworks! in Action
Many TheaterWorks! participants have returned to the program multiple times to deepen their skills and the community fostered, applied to theatre festivals to further platform the work they created in class, used it as a launch pad to return to school, and have become finalists and recipients of the Mark Plesent Commission Fund.
Prior participants have had this to say about their experience:
“I never knew that doing this theater work could change the way I feel about my job”
“I learned to face people and not to be shy”
“I would wake up every day that we met, ready to go, excited in a way I haven’t felt in too long”
“I learned to speak in public with confidence”
“It’s a place to speak out about things you can’t talk about at home or on the job”
“You relieve your stress by writing about it”
“This was one of my dreams that came true”