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Rising Youth Theatre 2023-2024 Season
Projects
CURIOUS: Playback Theatre for Queer Narratives
Queer narratives are often overlooked in theatre spaces and beyond -- attend CURIOUS to listen to and share queer stories close to the hearts of our audiences, and maybe watch your story come to life on stage in November 2024!
We have created this space to center queer narratives, and have put together an ensemble of young people identifying as lgbtq+ to learn how to hold our stories with grace and trust themselves and each other to create beautiful scenes using the improvisational form of Playback Theatre.
During this sharing, audience members will be prompted to share stories from their lived experiences, inspiring an improvised scene by our actors! This event is open to all but spots are limited to allow for a more casual, intimate environment.
Produced with support from the Kellenberger + Tollefson Center for LGBTQ Philanthropy and the Arizona Community Foundation
Keysmash: a conversation about mental health
A “keysmash” according to urban dictionary, is “exactly that, a random smashing of the keyboard that conveys intense or overwhelming emotion that cannot be expressed through words.” And we know that that is what trying to talk about mental health can feel like. For both young people and adults there is a tremendous amount of shame, stigma, and secrecy wrapped around these topics. We often don’t know how to start talking about anxiety, depression, suicidal ideation, the things that feel hardest, even when we want and need to. This project both imagines a future where mental health support is naturally embedded into all facets of our lives, and provides immediate resources and help to teens in crisis. Available for tour now!
Produced in partnership with Bring Change to Mind and the Laloboy Foundation with support from the New England Foundation for the Arts, Scottsdale Arts, Phoenix Office of Arts and Culture, Arizona Humanities, and the Arizona Commission on the Arts.
The Light Rail Plays
Rising Youth Theatre’s signature production, The Light Rail Plays is back! Based on the platform at the Tempe Transit Center, this project brings a public art performance to life on and around the Valley Metro Light Rail in February and March 2025. The project puts young people and adults into direct, one on one partnership and explores the nature of public transit and public art, specifically in our community. Produced in partnership with Valley Metro and the City of Tempe.
Coyote Woman
A new play written by playwright Carolyn Dunn and developed with the Rising Youth Theatre ensemble. Created as part of the BIPOC Superhero Project this project will be in development throughout fall 2024 and will be produced in May 2025.
Food & Home Across Generations
Food and Home Across Generations is an intergenerational storytelling project where Rising Youth will collaborate with South Korea based Masil Theatre to explore food, migration, and culture across generations. Each ensemble will work locally in their home community and virtually with the larger ensemble to discover and share stories at the intersection of food, culture, migration, and memory, and how these stories shape people’s experiences of their lineages. Artists and community members across generations - ranging from Gen Z to Millennials / GenX to Baby Boomers to the Silent Generation - will come together to share stories and recipes because both food and artmaking can be a connector across generations and cultures. Above all this is a community driven project, focusing on embodied research and both storytelling and recipes as a form of cultural and cross-generational archiving.
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