Creating Perform
ance
Creating Performance
★ What
Creating Performance is an after-school program in practical theater-making for local teens and young adults, run in partnership with social justice organization, El Puente. It invites young people to explore performance as a tool for self-expression, collaboration, and possibility. Participants learn skills including acting, writing, design, and technical theater.
With support from teaching artists and theater professionals, students learn different approaches to performance while creating original pieces rooted in the issues shaping their lives and communities. In a supportive space, they experiment with forms including traditional theater, spoken word, poetry, and music, building and revising their work together before sharing it in a free final presentation for family, friends, and neighbors.
Creating Performance was designed to be both educational and vocational — giving young people practical skills, creative confidence, and a pathway toward further training or work in the field. Just as importantly, it offers a space to turn lived experience into art and to be heard within and beyond their community.
This program is administered by our Education Director, Cassandra Brown, and happens in partnership with El Puente, a social justice organization rooted in Brooklyn youth and community leadership. Together with El Puente, we are connecting theater-making with the lived realities, creativity, and collective power of our local students.
Lead Teaching Artists Nadia Sepsenwol & Ian Askew
El Puente’s Senior Director of Programs Asenhat Gómez
Director of El Puente’s Bushwick Leadership Center Said Nunez
Creating Performance happens annually at El Puente’s Bushwick Leadership Center. Participants take a 5-week workshop in Summer and an intensive 8-week course in Winter. Our partnership with El Puente began in 2016, when The Bushwick Starr expanded its educational programming to reach high school-age students.
To participate or get involved, contact cassandra@thebushwickstarr.org.
Creating Performance is made possible with support from The Revada Foundation of the Logan Family, and our community of supporters.
