FRINGE BENEFITS ALLIANCE

OVERVIEW

Founded in 1991, Fringe Benefits has a 30-year track record of collaborating with schools and communities, both nationally and internationally, to create groundbreaking, social justice-promoting theatre, videos and programs. Our partnerships have produced over 200 world-premiere plays and videos. Additionally, we published 56 original children’s plays, songs and poems in our critically acclaimed COOTIE SHOTS. The anthology of essays about our unique play-devising methodology, STAGING SOCIAL JUSTICE, is used in university classes throughout the United States. Sir Ian McKellen narrates SURVIVING FRIENDLY FIRE, the award-winning documentary about our work. All of this work, along with Fringe Benefits’ theatre activism workshops and residencies, has earned acknowledgement by the President's Commission on the Arts and Humanities, and awards from: the CSJ Center for Reconciliation and Justice, the Association for Theatre in Higher Education, the Korean Youth and Community Center, The Castillo Theatre, Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays, LA, and Cornerstone Theater Company.

CURRENT PROGRAMS

Creative Tools for Critical Times (2019—present)
In 2019, Fringe Benefits launched Creative Tools for Critical Times (CT4CT) a multi-year, multi-community arts for civic engagement initiative comprising workshops, symposia, internship trainings, performing arts showcases, and a web-based video series. We developed CT4CT in response to the concern expressed by our youth and community partners that we are—all of us—living in critical times. The fabric of our social contracts is shredding; the socio-political landscape is riddled with landmines; our world is increasingly divided into us versus them camps. CT4CT builds bridges of understanding among diverse Southern California communities, who use their unique experiences to create artwork that promotes awareness and inspires action to constructively address injustices affecting underrepresented groups.

Through our CT4CT Videos for Social Justice Workshops with diverse school and community groups, participants develop videos and other artistic strategies for promoting social justice causes of importance to them. Through the Intern Training Program, university students learn how to facilitate these workshops, while also developing their own unique community-based arts for social justice projects. The Arts for Civic Engagement Showcases afford the interns and our middle school partners with opportunities to preview their video and theatre projects, and the “Think Outside the Box” Symposia create forums in which all program participants can reflect on the process and explore new ideas with each other and the public. The Videos for Social Justice Web Series provides a space where CT4CT participants can share their experiences with injustice and their visions for creating a more just future with the wider public.

Through this multi-pronged, multi-community, interlocking programming, CT4CT creates a unique, generative space for a diverse group of students & community members to collaborate non-hierarchically to tackle & find creative artistic solutions to complex, intersecting social justice issues.

Some of the groups we are partnering with on the project include Congregation B'nai Tzedek, Girls Build/L.A., City View Assisted Living, the University of Southern California (USC), Loyola Marymount University (LMU), Southeast Middle School (SEMS), the Los Angeles LGBT Center, Breath of Fire Latina Theater Ensemble, St. Mary’s School, New Horizon School, Brothers, Sons, Selves of InnerCity Struggle, and Coming to the Table/Pasadena, “a community of people who seek to heal from the ravages of slavery and the ensuing racism.” We are also collaborating with two distinguished groups of LGBTQ & Allied theatre artists, poets, and political and legal activists We are continuing to reach out to groups representing Asian Americans, Indigenous Peoples, Muslim Americans, people with disabilities, homeless adults and youth, and formerly incarcerated citizens, among others, in order to include as wide a range of communities and individuals as possible.

We have successfully piloted four of the CT4CT programs, including Videos for Social Justice Workshops with 46 community groups and schools; two 7-week Internship Trainings with our project partners at the University of Southern California, our first Arts for Civic Engagement Showcase, and our ongoing, online CT4CT Video Series (with 100+ original videos!). We’ve directly engaged over 1,400 participants and 5000 audience members. And we are eager to continue this vital, transformative work!

A BRIEF OVERVIEW OF OUR HISTORY

Early Years (1991—1996)
Our first community partners were homeless LGBTQ+ youth living in Los Angeles. Through story-sharing, discussion and improvisation, we collaborated with the youth to transform their experiences with homophobia and transphobia into powerful plays, three of which were published in our FRIENDLY FIRE anthology. One of these productions was commissioned by Peter Sellars and A.S.K. Theatre Projects for the L.A. Festival of the Arts and is the subject of the documentary film, SURVIVING FRIENDLY FIRE.

School Tour Shows (1997—2004)
Fringe Benefits employed our successful model of community collaboration to create our high school and middle school shows, TURN IT AROUND! and CLOTHES MINDED?! and our acclaimed COOTIE SHOTS, which has been shared with elementary school audiences throughout the United States. Dubbed "an American art trophy" by Art in the Public Interest, COOTIE SHOTS was published by Theatre Communications Group. Contributing artists to the project include over 500 youth, parents and educators, as well as artists such as Pulitzer Prize-winner Tony Kushner, MacArthur Fellowship recipient Luis Alfaro, and Academy Award winner Debra Chasnof.

Internships (1999—present)
Since 1999, we have welcomed interns interested in hands-on training in designing and facilitating theatre for social justice projects. Some interns work with us as teaching assistants, dramaturgs, and/or crew members for our programs. Other interns work with us to design their own unique projects. Periodically, we also offer internship trainings through which participants learn—through creative and cultural competency activities, discussion, research, and program and lesson plan design—a variety of strategies for collaboratively devising and leading theatre for social justice projects.

Theatre for Social Justice (TSJ) programs (2001—present)
Through our Theatre for Social Justice (TSJ) workshops we collaborate with participants to create plays addressing issues of importance to them. To date, Fringe Benefits has led nearly 200 TSJ Workshops, empowering students and educators, from elementary school through graduate school, as well as individuals in a wide array of community and religious organizations. Starting in 2002, we have also been custom-designing year-long TSJ Residencies for diverse middle and high schools, mostly in Los Angeles. Our TSJ Residencies introduce participants to civil rights issues and movements, and the role of the arts in those movements. Participants use what they learn to create and perform their own original plays and videos tackling social justice issues on their campuses and in their communities. The National Association of Multicultural Educators named Six-to-Six Magnet School in Bridgeport, Connecticut, "Multicultural Institution of the Year" for our work with them. Fringe Benefits has conducted 25 TSJ Institutes— ten-day play devising intensives—throughout the United States, and in Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom creating plays promoting positive, measurable change around a broad range of issues.

Stand Up & Speak Out Residencies: (2014—present)
We are now in our 8th year of leading Theatre & Videos for Social Justice Residencies with Southeast Middle School (SEMS) in L.A. This partnership brings together SEMS students, Fringe Benefits teaching artists and interns, USC and LMU students, and Espérer Service Organization volunteers. In 2016, in response to requests from student participants and audiences, the residency evolved into an Anti-Bullying Theatre Club through which the youth created and performed interactive, ally-empowering plays. In 2018, the participants collaborated to create short videos promoting media literacy and human rights in their school, their community and beyond. In 2019, we started working with the youth to further expand their work through our Creative Tools for Critical Times initiative.

WISDOM Through Film (2019—present)
Through WISDOM, we provide community elders with opportunities to share with youth their stories and sage advice about tackling discrimination. WISDOM was developed by our Granada Hills Charter High School student mentees for their International Baccalaureate community service project. The students conducted, videotaped and edited more than a dozen moving, thoughtful videos which can be viewed on the WISDOM website and social media accounts which they also created. When they graduated, they invited us to carry on their good work. Our current WISDOM project—“Sippin’ Tea with Tiffani”—is a video series through which elders “spill the tea” about how we can promote social change and heal from discrimination.

CREATING CHANGE, 1991—PRESENT

In all of our work, our goal is to create a context in which people can transform their damaging experiences with discrimination into art & dialogue that promote respect, inclusion & justice. Our partnerships have helped inspire schools to end discriminatory policies. Thanks in part to our work, youth have obtained emergency housing; formerly incarcerated women have found employment; Rotarians decided to support marriage equality; high school students learned ally-empowering strategies; and a university made their campus more accessible for people with disabilities.

Fringe Benefits is committed to building bridges of understanding between diverse communities and enlarging and strengthening our alliance of people who are actively working to end all forms of discrimination.