Berkeley Repertory Theatre

The berkeley rep school of theatre served close to 12,000 children, teens, and life-long learners from 11 california counties in 2023/24. Providing arts learning opportunities young people may not otherwise have access to during the school day, particularly those attending economically under-resourced schools, our programs in bay area schools (including in-school residencies, student matinees, and high school theatre festival) helped build over 4,000 students' competence in skills like empathy, creative thinking, communication, curiosity, and human connection that will not only help enhance their academic performance but are among the top skills that will equip them for success in their future life and careers. Our teen council programs (continued on schedule o) continue to empower young people in leadership and advocacy through the arts and increase arts access to bay area highschoolers. The teen leadership council hosted 444 of their peers at teen nights for six shows during the 2023/24 season, which brought teens together in community to talk deeply about the themes of the productions and engage with some of the industry's leading artists. Our next generation fellowship program engaged 12 early career arts professionals with training and mentorship throughout the 2023/24 season, and many of our fellows were able to secure employment by the conclusion of their fellowship, with a few ending their fellowships early to pursue paid positions in the arts (including at berkeley rep). The berkeley rep school of theatre in partnership with the formerly incarcerated people's performance project (fippp) led storytelling workshops with incarcerated individuals at the san francisco san bruno jail and downtown san francisco jail facilities. These workshops helped program participants craft original devised theatre pieces which they shared during a culminating performance within the facility.

The ground floor: berkeley rep's center for the creation and development of new work has grown into a nationally recognized program that has served over 800 artists and been part of the developmental journey of more than 50 projects that have appeared on stages from berkeley rep to broadway and around the globe. Offering flexible, customized support for artists creating new work for the american theatre, berkeley rep's 2024 ground floor summer residency lab brought together over 100 local and national artists over four weeks to make art in a flexible, supportive environment. The 23 projects in this year's summer residency lab were diverse in scope and size and included plays, adaptations, musicals, devised pieces, and a few ideas still in nascent stages. (continued on schedule o)during the 2023/24 season, we hosted two workshops with playwright richard montoya for his commissioned play "suicide on telegraph". The ground floor also supported the world premiere musical "galileo" as the penultimate production of the organization's 2023/24 season. In addition, the program supported the continued development of three plays in our 2023/24 season with the playwrights in residence to continue work on their scripts including leslye headland ("cult of love"), lloyd suh ("the far country"), and octavio solis ("mother road"). Berkeley repertory theatre's in dialogue program partnered with 40 community organizations, artists, community leaders, and small businesses in 2023/24. Throughout the season, we engaged audiences and community members through events and activations in conversation with our mainstage productions. Our six community celebration nights during the 2023/24 season filled our spaces with music, food, community, and joy. These free, public events included pre-show performances featuring local artists and performers with refreshments from local asian-, black-, indigenous-, and latine-owned businesses; post-show conversations; and discounted tickets. We partnered with community leaders and organizations to engage in pre- and post-show dialogues that connected the themes explored in our onstage productions to real-life issues affecting our local community. We continued relationships with ongoing partners to offer storytelling workshops and to make our spaces available as rehearsal and performance venues.