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The Actors' Gang Performs at Washington Elementary

Media Release

What is Much Ado About Pooh? Washington scholars recently found out when The Actors’ Gang performed the unique mash up between Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing and Winnie The Pooh, delighting the students attending the amazing play held in the school’s cafeteria.

 

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The Actors' Gang is an experimental theatre and nonprofit group based in Culver City. It was founded in 1981 by a group of UCLA actors, including Academy Award winner Tim Robbins. This was their first performance for an elementary school in 40 years.

 

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The students participated in activities and lessons leading up to the play. There was a Question and Answer session for students to engage with the actors once the performance was done.

 

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The Actors’ Gang mission is to present new, unconventional, and uncompromising plays and dynamic reinterpretations of the classics, to restore the ancient sense of the stage as a shared sacred space, to introduce theater to children and help them find their own creative voices, and to bring the freedom of self-expression to the incarcerated.

 

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Today, the Actors’ Gang is 50 committed artists touring throughout the world, still doing theater, still telling timely stories, all while running nationally recognized programs in prisons, reentry facilities, and schools.

Its teachers have been joined by formerly incarcerated participants, a relentless staff, and a growing number of women, men, and youth who are using the tools they provide to make life-altering change happen.