Act Out Justice
2016-2020
Act Out Justice (formerly The Justice Project) was an initiative in partnership with Orlando Repertory Theatre. AOJ empowered high school students as leaders and activists through devised theatre and personal storytelling. The pilot project consisted of working with a 22-student all male leadership class at Evans High School in Orlando's Pine Hills community. These students, who had no previous theatre training, spent five weeks devising a performance about community, prejudices, and police. They then presented the performance in an interactive workshop, in which they also led and facilitated portions. The workshop was hosted by the Valencia College Criminal Justice Institute and was attended by both police in training and professional police officers. In 2018-2019 and 2019-2020, the program expanded to five high schools and included a Youth Leadership Summit, a day of training and keynote presentations for all youth participants featuring Central Florida community leaders and activists.
Following the completion of the pilot program, we took four scholarship recipients from Evans High School to present about the work at the 2016 National Conference for the American Alliance for Theatre and Education in Boston. Below is the devised piece performed by the four scholarship recipients.
Photo credit Orlando Repertory Theatre. Video credit Groundup Pictures.