Life Stories

Everyone has a story to tell and a voice that deserves to be heard.

Click here to make a donation to our Life Stories program

Since 2000, The Theatre Lab has offered Life Stories—a free dramatic arts outreach program for some of DC’s most vulnerable youth and adults who have little opportunity for structured, creative self-expression. Through training in acting, storytelling, screenwriting and directing, participants create original dramatic works for the stage and screen using their real life experiences. Most Life Stories programs meet weekly for a period of 8-12 weeks and conclude with final screenings of professionally edited student work.

 Life Stories programs take place on-site at our long-term partner organizations:

• N Street Village : TTL partners with this DC homeless, health care and day center for women to annually serve more than 30 formerly homeless women challenged by addiction and mental health issues. Many of the N Street Village women attended TTL’s Cabaret Benefit in November 2010 where they met our board and supporters, and saw their work profiled in a public screening of TTL’s Life Stories outreach projects. We are currently developing a long-term project to create a full-length documentary of this inspiring program.

• New Beginnings : Since 2008, TTL has worked in the DC Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services’ most secure correctional facility located in Laurel, Maryland. We provide a year-round residency of 6 ten-week sessions to serve over 100 of DC’s most troubled and violent male youth offenders. In 2010, participants produced films exploring the role of Islam in prison life, as well as pieces examining recent prison riots at their facility, and the difficulty of transitioning to the outside world after prison.

• Paso Nuevo at DC’s GALA Hispanic Theatre : Since 2007, TTL has partnered with this after-school performance workshop for at-risk Latino youth ages 13-19. In 2010, we offered two sessions, serving 55 young people. Recent projects include a dramatic work featuring black and Latino perceptions of community, home, identity, and race through bilingual poetry and performance; and a film exploring stories of hybrid Americans.

• Potomac Job Corps Center : TTL offers an intensive program that serves 30 recently adjudicated and/or hard-to-place youth residing at this GED and vocational training center in Anacostia in DC’s Ward 8.

• Friendship Terrace : TTL provides programs for seniors at this DC senior living community. An eight-week class trains elderly men and women to create a 10-minute performance piece based on their own memories. Drawing on substantial research into the benefits of “reminiscence therapy,” TTL instructors introduce acting and presentation skills to help older people shape their memories into stories and present their pieces in a theatrically effective way. The class culminates in a public performance.

• The Children’s Inn at the National Institutes of Health (NIH): Beginning in 2011, TTL will pilot a new short-term Lie Stories format at the NIH’s Bethesda, Maryland residence for families that have traveled far to live together with their children who are receiving medical treatments. We will offer a series of one-night improvisational workshops, exploring identity and self-perception, for children in treatment, their siblings and their parents.
  
  
• DC’s Youth Services Center: TTL’s newest partnership is with DC’s Department of Youth Services’ Mt. Olivet facility, which serves youth awaiting court actions. In summer 2012, TTL will offer a short Life Stories pilot program for 15 incarcerated males and females—many of whom are first offenders who will be immediately released back into the community on probation.  TTL is also working with DYRS officials to develop a continuing education program that can serve these youth once they are released from the facility.

Click here to make a donation to our Life Stories program