Join us for TONYC's youth troupe performances of Perfect Family: Smile for the Camera and The Very Helpful Organization, part of Get Rooted: A Community Showcase.
About Perfect Family: Smile for the Camera: This devised forum play explores gender through the lens of young New Yorkers, including issues like gender-based workplace discrimination, gender stereotyping, and familial discord. How does gender discrimination show up at home, at work, and at school? And what happens when we push back on gender conventions and challenge our social conditioning? This show was created by young people at the Red Hook Community Justice Center.
About The Very Helpful Organization: It's not always easy to advocate for yourself, especially when doing so means risking your basic resources. This forum performance explores the reality of how young people navigate social services and group housing versus the fantasy of a superhero advocate who could step up and speak up on your behalf. How do we become our own and each other's superhero? And what might a system that doesn't demand superhero-level courage look like? This show was created by young people at the Ali Forney Center.
As part of each performance, audience members will be invited to step into the play and improvise alternative responses to the systems of oppression depicted in what is called an "intervention," creatively brainstorming systemic change together.
About the Red Hook Community Justice Center: The winner of multiple national awards for innovation, the Red Hook Community Justice Center houses a courtroom in which a single judge hears cases that under ordinary circumstances would go to three different courts—Civil, Family, and Criminal. The tools at the judge’s disposal include community restitution projects, short-term psycho-educational groups, and long-term treatment. Beyond the courtroom, the Justice Center offers an array of unconventional programs that work to improve both public safety and trust in justice. An independent evaluation found the Justice Center significantly reduced recidivism and the number of people receiving jail sentences while enhancing public confidence in government.
About the Ali Forney Center: The Ali Forney Center, based in New York City, is the largest LGBT community center helping LGBTQ homeless youth in the United States. The AFC both manages and develops transitional housing for its clients. AFC helps approximately 2,000 youth clients each year, primarily between sixteen and twenty-four years old.
Note about tickets: While Theatre of the Oppressed NYC is offering Choose-What-You-Pay tickets to this event, we invite you to make a donation after RSVPing if you are able. All donations support our work, paying for rehearsal and performance spaces, transportation, actor and Joker salaries, props and costumes, and so much more. You can make a contribution here.
The cost of running a single Forum Theatre Troupe is $36,000 per cycle! This means that if we sold 100 forum performance tickets at $360 each, we could fund the full cycle of a single Troupe — and that’s before factoring in the costs that support our administrative staff, office space, and more. TONYC runs 12 play-building cycles annually, which are funded primarily through grants, allowing us to keep tickets free while paying actors and Jokers, covering transportation costs, buying props and costumes, and doing everything else that makes our shows happen!
Historically, TONYC has been primarily supported through grants. In the past four years, operational expenses have drastically increased, but our funding has not. While TONYC has an abundance of community enthusiasm for our work, we still need $400,000 of funding in 2024. A donation of any amount will support our organization through a shifting funding landscape.
COVID policy: In order to keep our actors and staff safe, we ask that attendees please wear masks at all times inside the venue, unless they have received a negative COVID test result within the last 24 hours.