Stagebridge

Stagebridge (Oakland, CA) is the longest established senior theater company in the United States, and the only professional performing arts training company for older adults on the West Coast. Founded in 1978, the organization consists of 150 actors and storytellers who average seventy years of age. The group exists to give older adults a creative voice in a culture that makes older people socially invisible, and it pursues its mission by providing acting, singing, playwriting, and storytelling classes at senior and community centers and at its Arts First facility in Oakland. Stagebridge presents public performances that reach 30,000 people annually. Continued Hewlett Foundation support for the Old Voices – New Stories project will enable the organization to expand storytelling training and performance opportunities to Latino and Asian senior communities in the East Bay. With Hewlett funding, Stagebridge will recruit and train thirty Asian and thirty Latino seniors to become storytellers each year to perform in local schools, record their stories for broadcast on public radio, and increase the diversity of its repertory company and board of directors. (Renewal, $100,000/2; 63% of project budget)

Stagebridge is a theater company created by and for older adults. It offers professionally led performing arts workshops and public performance opportunities for more than 5,000 participants each year. In addition to its programming at senior centers and residential nursing homes, Stagebridge offers participatory storytelling programs at local elementary schools for second- through fifth-grade students.BATS Improv $40,000 over 8 months, 6% of organization budgetFor general operating supportBATS Improv (formerly Bay Area Theatresports) is the region’s leading presenter and instructor of improvisational theater. Each year, it reaches more than 13,000 people through 130 performances at San Francisco’s Fort Mason Center, and 100 workshops held throughout the Bay Area. The company’s 20 members serve as instructors for enrolled students, corporate clients, and people living with chronic and life-threatening illnesses.