Jaradoa Theater Company Presents 'Jaradoa Jam' 6/9

Jaradoa Theater, a company of professional theater artists - actors, directors, designers, writers - who serve through performance, is celebrating the success of its first year with the 2nd Annual JARADOA JAM fundraiser on Monday, June 9 at 5 and 8 pm at the Vineyard Theatre. It will feature plays written by fifth graders at PS 206 in East Harlem, where Jaradoa recently completed its Play On! program; a 1940's radio play that Jaradoa performs for the elderly; songs from the company's first musical, Serenade; an excerpt from their latest production, The Small of Her Back; and a mini-documentary of their work in schools.

Performing in the JARADOA JAM will be the members of Jaradoa Theater.  Jaradoa's membership includes: Managing Artistic Director April Nickell, Associate Artistic Director Anika Larsen, Associate Managing Director Angi Taylor; actors Chris Harbur, John Harrison, Joshua Henry, Amanda Hunt, Kevin Smith Kirkwood, Telly Leung, Nicole Lewis, Kelly McCreary, and Eileen Rivera; composer Nils Olaf Dolven; costume designer Andrea Varga; and graphic designer Greg Gorman.

Admission is $25, payable at the door. For more information, visit www.jaradoatheater.org.
 
Jaradoa (Just A Roomful of Artists Doing Outreach And) Theater is equally devoted to productions and performance-based outreach.  The company does theater that promotes mercy, beauty and truth in an environment where artists thrive, and uses storytelling to address brokenness in their community. Jaradoa  provides opportunities for theater artists to serve that accommodate their crazy lives and use their greatest assets.

In Jaradoa's first year it instituted three service programs, which continue to grow. Jaradoa teamed up with education consultants and public middle school teachers to implement Theater & Literacy workshops, which use theater to improve reading and writing skills in the classroom.  Jaradoa members and volunteers use actors' and playwrights' methods of approaching a script to help 5th and 6th graders with envisioning, empathy and text analysis. Play On!, Jaradoa's playwriting and acting program, has been successfully piloted at BronxConnect, a community-based alternative-to-incarceration program for 12- to 18-year-olds who have been convicted of felonies, and was just completed at a public middle school in East Harlem. Through Jaradoa Radio Theater the company reaches out to elderly and homeless populations by performing radio plays just as they aired in the 1940s and 1950s.  Afterwards, members and volunteers spend time with these seniors, chatting and listening to their stories.

Jaradoa's quest to promote mercy, beauty and truth defines its creative sensibility.  It informs the way they do theater - with respect, collaboration, integrity, joy - as well as the kind of work they do.  Jaradoa strives to do theater that resonates, inspires, and asks better questions without sounding preachy, agenda-driven or like an after-school special. 

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