ACT TWO
Directed/Produced by Laurel Butler Northwest Auditorium at UCLA March 17, 2018 The ACT TWO Performing Arts Program for Formerly Incarcerated and System-Impacted Los Angeles Youth began in the Fall of 2017 with generous support from the California Arts Council's Re-Entry Through the Arts Grant. Guided by Laurel's facilitation, a group of formerly incarcerated and systems-impacted youth discovered that Los Angeles County was planning to spend 3.5 billion dollars to expand the largest jail system in the world. They realized that if they came together, and wrote their stories into a script, it could help change the course of history. In March of 2018, ACT TWO was presented as an evening-length original theatrical performance piece, collaboratively devised by a company of fifteen young artists directly impacted by the juvenile justice system, and directed and produced by Laurel, to a sold-out audience at UCLA's Northwest Auditorium. Subsequently, the 21st Century Fox Social Impact program offered to support the film version of ACT TWO, and so in July of 2018 the original stage show was adapted into a movie, with Laurel serving as Executive Producer. For more on ACT TWO: the Movie, click here. In April of 2017, the Arts for Incarcerated Youth Network proposed a merger with Agency Arts, and ACT TWO became the official pilot project for the Young Artivists Lab, a project-based re-entry through the arts program. Laurel served as AIYN's Youth Development and Leadership Specialist for during the iteration and implementation phase of AIYN's re-entry pilot prototyping, supporting the development and coordination of the Young Artivist's Lab and Youth to Power, a community-building program for youth recently released from incarceration at LA County probation facilities. For more on the AIYN Young Artivists Lab, click here. |
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