"Seeds of Resistance 2025"

Students interviewed four community leaders whose work in social justice movements have inspired the creation of four new plays that will be presented in a live performance by professional actors, teaching artists, and students. This event will include fully-staged performances of the new plays.

The teaching artists who mentored the youth include Carene Rose Mekertichyan, Brandon Rachal, Robert Paterno, Catherine Dee Holly, and Young Theaterworks Program Manager and Lead Teaching Artist Marlene Beltran.

Register for the event to let us know you plan to attend. This event is free, or you can make an additional donation at checkout.

A native Angeleno and Jesuit priest, from 1986 to 1992 Father Greg Boyle served as pastor of Dolores Mission Church in Boyle Heights, then the poorest Catholic parish in Los Angeles that also had the highest concentration of gang activity in the city. 

Father Boyle witnessed the devastating impact of gang violence on his community during the so-called “decade of death” that began in the late 1980s and peaked at 1,000 gang-related killings in 1992.  In the face of law enforcement tactics and criminal justice policies of suppression and mass incarceration as the means to end gang violence, he and parish and community members adopted what was a radical approach at the time: treat gang members as human beings. 

In 1988 they started what would eventually become Homeboy Industries, which employs and trains former gang members in a range of social enterprises, as well as provides critical services to thousands of men and women who walk through its doors every year seeking a better life. 

Father Boyle is the author of the 2010 New York Times-bestseller Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion. His new book, Barking to the Choir: The Power of Radical Kinship, was published in 2017. 

He has received the California Peace Prize and been inducted into the California Hall of Fame.  In 2014, President Obama named Father Boyle a Champion of Change. He received the University of Notre Dame’s 2017 Laetare Medal, the oldest honor given to American Catholics. Currently, he serves as a committee member of California Governor Gavin Newsom’s Economic and Job Recovery Task Force as a response to COVID-19.

A songwriter, dance and theater artist and founder of Great Leap. She uses Art as a form of activism to reclaim history, identity and build solidarity among diverse communities. A veteran of Broadway and film, she found her own voice as a troubadour in the 70s Asian American movement. Across five decades she forged a creative practice thriving on community, collaboration and participatory arts, recently co-producing the FandangObon Festival. Her work chronicled in memoir: Not Yo’ Butterfly (UC Press, 2021); documentary: Nobuko Miyamoto, A Song in Movement, PBS.org. For more info: www.nobukomiyamoto.org.

Rubén Funkáhuatl Guevara is a multifaceted native Angelino Chicano rock & soul musician, singer, songwriter, and bandleader with Ruben And The Jets (cofounded with and produced by Frank Zappa), Con Safos, and Thee Eastside Luvers. He is also a record producer of Chicano rock and Rock en Español compilations, performance artist, poet, playwright, fiction writer, author, and activist. He was designated a Boyle Heights cultural treasure by ACTA in 2012. His memoir, Confessions Of A Radical Chicano Doo-Wop Singer, (University of California Press, 2018), was a finalist for the 2019 International Latino Book Awards for Best Autobiography in English. In 2016, his solo performance theater piece based on his autobiography had its world premiere at Casa 0101 Theater in Boyle Heights. In 2021, the KCET/ PBS SoCal arts and culture program, Artbound, premiered Con Safos, a documentary based on six decades of his work as a Chicano culture sculptor. It was nominated for an Emmy and won two local and two national broadcast journalism awards. (“Lively and inspiring” -LA Times).  Masao And The Bronze Nightingale, a stage play based on a short story of his, had its world premiere in 2022 (“A moving epic” -Stage Raw). He was in the group show Sonic Terrains in Latinx Art at the Vincent Price Art Museum in 2022 and in 2023, collaborated with Klee Jones Benally, (Rest in Peace) a noted Diné musician, poet, and performer, in a cross-cultural, Diné, Xikan@ intergenerational performance art theater piece, Tzonteyōtl Na’ Ach’ Aah’ / Resistance Art at the ArtX Festival in Flagstaff Arizona. His second book, a collection of his writing, Funkáhuatl Speaks: L.A. Stories, Poems, and Memorias, is in the works. He has lived and worked in Boyle Heights for the past forty years.

Los Angeles educator and activist “Vickie” Castro was raised with her four brothers in the Boyle Heights area of Los Angeles. Her parents were a seamstress from El Paso and a furniture maker from Mexico.  She attended local schools, Euclid Ave., Hollenbeck Junior High and graduated from Roosevelt High School.

Castro attended Cal State LA and earned her teaching credential as a Teacher Corp Intern stationed in Salinas, California - via U. C. Santa Cruz.  She holds a master’s degree in Urban Education and Administration from Pepperdine University. She worked in an array of educational post that ranged from teaching 7th grade math to assuming her first position as a school principal at Belvedere Junior High in 1986.

In 1993, Castro was elected to the Los Angeles Board of Education. As a member of the board she worked tirelessly to improve the school system.   In 2001 after two terms on the board, including board president, she returned to school administration as the principal of Hollenbeck Middle School, the junior high she attended.  Ms. Castro retired from Hollenbeck in 2006.  

Ms. Castro has been recognized for her participation and organizing skills as a student activist during the 1968 East Los Angeles Walkouts.  She joined the E.L.A. Chapter of the  Association of Mexican American Educators( AMAE) in 1973.  She served as State AMAE President in 1981 and continues to support the goals and mission of AMAE.

Ms. Castro currently serves on several community-based board of directors.  Her activism, dedication, and leadership continue to contribute to community empowerment, educational reform and inspire those who follow in her footsteps.

The 10-week Social Justice Residency is part of About...Productions’ Young Theaterworks program. Now in its 24th year, Young Theaterworks serves highest-risk and educationally underrepresented 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, the program also empowers them to become stewards of their community’s history.

About…Productions creates original interdisciplinary theaterworks and educational programs that provoke new perspectives on history, humanity, and culture. The company is dedicated to generating new work through collaboration to create artistic and community dialogue and believes in the power of theater to enlighten audiences, transform youth, and celebrate the lives of seniors. For more information, visit our website.

Young Theaterworks programs are generously supported by the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, theCalifornia Arts Council, the Pasadena Arts & Culture Commission and the City of Pasadena Cultural Affairs Division, the Los Angeles County Department of Arts and Culture, and the National Latinx Theater Initiative.

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