Four professional teaching artists who spend their days guiding public high school students through the craft of writing personal monologues will perform their own next weekend at Lineage Performing Arts Center — using the same creative process they teach in the classroom, with their students’ recorded voices woven into the production.
“The Art of Dreaming: a landscape of L.A. voices,” presented by Pasadena-based About…Productions, features original monologues written and performed by professional artists. It integrates voiceover excerpts from student-written monologues recorded by current students in the company’s “Art of the Monologue” workshop at Roosevelt High School in East Los Angeles. The voiceover excerpts were written by students from Pasadena Unified and Los Angeles Unified School Districts.
The production, directed by lead teaching artist, Marlene Beltran, runs March 28–29 as the company’s Young Theaterworks education program marks its 25th year. The four professional writer-performers are Catherine Dee Holly, Brandon Rachal, Marta Portillo, and Sayda Trujillo. All are currently or have been teaching artists in the Young Theaterworks program.
Each teaching artist went through the same writing prompts used in the student residencies, Beltran said in an interview. The prompts ask participants to examine their dreams, their fears, and what they hope for themselves and their communities. The result is a set of monologues rooted in each writer’s personal, cultural, and Los Angeles-area experiences — on themes of migration, generational memory, injustice, and a longing for rest.
“The process of creating this work has really been a practice in imagining how our individual dreams converge and what it means to be able to have a space, a safe place for these dreams to exist and for these hopes to become one collective dream,” Beltran said.
The production is movement-based, with group pieces and movement connecting the individual monologues, Beltran said. Video projections designed by Ly Eisenstein incorporate cosmic imagery alongside archival material from 25 years of Young Theaterworks programming, Beltran said. Tony Sauza, the production’s sound designer, composed original music for the show.
Rachal and Portillo are currently teaching artists at Roosevelt High School’s Math, Science, and Technology Magnet Academy, where they mentor students in the “Art of the Monologue” workshop. Students they work with recorded the voiceovers of student monologue excerpts included in the show. About…Productions is also working with Thurgood Marshall Secondary School and John Muir High School in Pasadena, and is looking to expand to additional schools, Beltran said.
“The impact that these programs have on the youth is very, very palpable in that you can see the transformation from day one to the last day of culmination,” Beltran said.
The performers bring varied professional backgrounds. Holly is a classically trained actor who has appeared in “This Is Us” (NBC) and “NCIS: New Orleans” (CBS) and works as a trauma-informed educator. Rachal is a theatremaker who co-hosts “The Melanated Archives,” a podcast celebrating iconic Black actors in theatre, film, and television. Portillo received a best lead performance nomination from the Orange County Theatre Guild for her role in “ALMA” at the Chance Theater and has used theater education to work with communities in health education, social justice, and intergenerational programming for over a decade. Trujillo is an assistant professor of theatre at Cal Poly Pomona who has written and performed four solo shows presented at REDCAT, La Mama, and New York Theatre Workshop, according to the production’s press materials.
“This has given me the much needed time and space to reflect on the power of art and place, and our collective roots and journeys,” Trujillo said, according to About…Productions.
About…Productions, headquartered at 75 N. Marengo Avenue in Pasadena, was founded in 1988 by four collaborators from CalArts. The company creates original interdisciplinary theaterworks and educational programs. Its Young Theaterworks program, established in 2001, serves highest-risk youth in L.A.-area public high schools with high impact, project-based learning that improves academic achievement and creative engagement. Strengthening students’ literacy practice, and collaboration and communication skills, its arts education programming also empowers them to become stewards of their community’s history, according to the company’s website.
“I hope that if [the audience] is able to come and witness this artistic offering, that the communal space becomes a place for dreaming to be explored, for you to hear the dreams of others and be able to see yourselves in that,” Beltran said. “It’s really a calling for us to gather together and to imagine the kind of world and the kind of community that we are wishing for ourselves and that we can build together.”
“My wish for those who come to witness the offering that we are so lovingly crafting is that together we can contemplate on the idea that what we carry into the future is up to us, that we are responsible for creating the future that we want, that we have to be brave enough to follow the calling of our dreams,” Beltran said, “We do this in honor of those who have come before us and in order to give the next generations, a place for them to hope and dream as well.”
The Saturday, March 28, performance begins at 8 p.m., with doors opening at 7:30 p.m. The Sunday, March 29, matinee begins at 2 p.m., with doors at 1:30 p.m.
Both performances are at Lineage Performing Arts Center, 920 E. Mountain St. in Pasadena. Tickets are $25 online and $30 at the door. Students, seniors, and veterans can purchase tickets for $20 using codes STUDENT5, SENIOR5, or VET5 at checkout; identification is required at the box office. The Sunday 2:00 p.m. performance also includes the option to purchase a $50 ticket for a fundraiser titled “Building Futures Through the Arts: Celebrating Young Theaterworks 25th Anniversary,” which includes reserved seating, a post-show reception, and a silent auction.
The venue is wheelchair accessible, with free parking available. Tickets and information are available at lineagepac.org or click here.
