Skskskskid row.

Last week our class went down (town). Way down (town).
I got to wake my white privileged butt up an hour early to drag it down to the impoverishment capital of LA county: skid row. I told my car I loved it, kissed it goodbye, locked it up tight, and entered the offices of the LAPD. No, not that cops. The poverty department. Seriously, they aren't cops. They just want to hear about your hopes, dreams, and aspirations. And give you some menacing-cool shades.

The sort of theater we got to experience was not the sort I'm used to making, It was theater as a tool, rather than as the goal. Watching the little skits performed by the homeless and formerly homeless was almost akin to the sort of puppetry used to talk to traumatized children: the theater is obviously only the means to what they're trying to do. As such, there is no real drive to make it GREAT theater, so it's awfully hard to talk about as theater.

Even harder to talk about were those young foreign artists whose answer to "What is your goal here?" seemed to be "Exactly! what IS our goal here?"