Los Angeles Poverty Department was founded in 1985 by director, performer, and activist John Malpede. LAPD was the first performance group in the nation made up principally of homeless people, and the first arts program of any kind for homeless people in Los Angeles. Skid Row Los Angeles is the poorest area in the city, with the largest concentration of homeless people of any neighborhood in the US. At the time of its founding, homelessness in Skid Row was thought of as a “beans and blankets” issue. Poor and homeless people in the neighborhood were warehoused in shelters, fed in soup lines, and there was little belief and no means for assisting people to rise out of this condition. LAPD, as the first arts organization on Skid Row, was active in a conversation and a movement with advocates, residents and social service professionals, that changed the paradigm by putting forward the idea that Skid Row could be improved, by embracing and nourishing the powers of the people who live there.
Henriëtte Brouwers
Los Angeles, CA
Henriëtte Brouwers is the associate director of Los Angeles Poverty Department and a performer and director with experience in Europe and the U.S. Her work has been presented at 7 Stages in Atlanta, the Baltimore Theater Project and Touchstone Theater in Pennsylvania. Her solo project, La Lengua: the Tongue of Cortes, was presented at Highways in Los Angeles in 2000. Brouwers has taught theater at the University of Tennessee, Baltimore High School for the Arts, Towson University and Pomona College. She is an artist-in-residence at the 18th Street Arts Complex in Santa Monica, CA.
History of Incarceration
Los Angeles Poverty Department was founded in 1985 by director-performer-activist John Malpede.
MoreJohn Malpede
Artist BioHenriëtte Brouwers
Artist BioKevin Michael Key
Artist BioPamela Miller
Artist BioHistory of Incarceration is comprised of an evening-length theater performance, a public artwork and various community engagements around issues of incarceration in America. Utilizing collaborative techniques developed over 20 years with Malpede’s company, Los Angeles Poverty Department, History of Incarceration is created by artists, organizers and residents of Los Angeles’s Skid Row, many of whom are recently released from prison. Material is being developed through community meetings and partnerships with grassroots organizations, first toward a large-scale outdoor public event and then for the theatrical performance.
Los Angeles Poverty Department
Los Angeles, CA
John Malpede
Los Angeles, CA
John Malpede is a director, performer, writer and the founder of the theater ensemble Los Angeles Poverty Department. The company’s mission is to create performances that connect lived experience to social forces that shape the lives of poor people. Malpede has produced community-engaged projects throughout the U.S. and in the U.K., The Netherlands, France and Belgium. He has received a New York Dance and Performance ”Bessie” Award, San Francisco Art Institute’s Kent Award, the LA Stage Alliance Ovation Award and individual artist fellowships from NYSCA, the NEA and the California Arts Council. He is a 2008 fellow at MIT’s Center for Advanced Visual Studies and a recepient of the 2013 Doris Duke Perfroming Artist Award.
Kevin Michael Key
Los Angeles, CA
Kevin Michael Key is a performer, community organizer and attorney. He is active in the recovery community in downtown Los Angeles and in such advocacy groups as the Los Angeles Action Network and Critical Resistance, a national group addressing the criminal justice system and its effects on communities of color. Key has performed with Los Angeles Poverty Department in Agents & Assets and has traveled with the company for productions and residencies in New York, Charlotte, Utrecht and the Paris suburb of Glenvilliers. Kevin Michael Key passed away at age 67.
Pamela Miller
Los Angeles, CA
Pamela Miller is a magazine writer and editor from New York City. She joined Los Angeles Poverty Department in the summer of 2007 and has worked there in various capacities, including administration, grant writing, photography, event program writing and editing, props and costuming. She made her stage-managing debut in the group’s December production of Utopia/Dystopia at the Disney Hall’s REDCATTheater.