A vibrant montage of images and characters, this warm, passionate play explores what it means to be Latino, Black and proud growing up in the heart of the American melting pot. Written with the Young Playwrights’ Theater and back by popular demand, this is a must-see insight into the challenges—and triumphs—experienced by today’s multicultural youth.

A Closer Look - About the Production:

The museum theater production African Roots/ Latino Soul is the third world premiere produced for Discovery Theater’s Hispanic Heritage Series “Living in Two Languages”. The series explores the questions of American Latino bi-cultural identity and how young people find vibrant, creative ways to integrate and express both those cultures. Funded by The Smithsonian Latino Center, African Roots/ Latino Soul is the second Discovery Theater production to be written by kids, with the guidance of some extremely talented artists.

Both plays were complied from the writings of more than 30 DC public school students. Under the guidance of the staff of YPT in workshops in their schools, students write about cultural and personal experience, often in moving anecdotes and fresh exciting voices.  Fourth- through 7th-graders at MacFarland Middle School and 10th- through 12th-graders at Bell Multicultural School (many of whom come from, or have parents who come from, Africa, Central and South America, and the Caribbean) drew on their experiences and imaginations, working in small groups to compose monologues, dialogues, scenes, poems, and songs. Their writings became the basis of African Roots/ Latino Soul.

African Roots/Latino Soul follows the thoughts and emotions of young people coming from ‘homes’ across the ocean, across dusty borders or in the city streets of Washington. Funny and thoughtful scenes from school life highlight the cultural misunderstandings that they must dispel; music runs through the production highlighting the blend of African, American and Latino in their lives. An evocative chant takes us back to the sugar can plantations and live African drum evokes the ancestors and their beginnings of the Afro-Latino Diaspora.  Poetic memories of Celia Cuz and her calls of “Azucar!” and an overheard conversation in a subway …life with a salsa beat make living Black, Latino and American a great place to be! This play for young people is our window onto that world: thought-provoking and great theatre. Audiences asked for this play all year: so it is back by popular demand. Don’t miss it!

About Young Playwright’s Theater:

Founded in 1995 by MacArthur Award-winning playwright Karen Zacarias, Young Playwrights’ Theater (YPT) inspires children and youth in the inner city to write plays as a means of fostering literacy, arts education, communication, and conflict resolution. YPT then shares their original works with the greater D.C. community through professional productions and tours utilizing the area's finest actors, directors and designers. Through interactive in-school and after-school programs and collaborative projects, YPT connects students, teachers, families, actors, playwrights, and professional theaters in order to create new plays that reflect the intimate voices of their communities, with a particular focus on the diversity of voices that make up the American experience. By presenting student-written plays free of charge throughout the region, YPT encourages a local appreciation of young artists and serves as a forum for communication between youth and the wider community.

YPT is the only professional theater in Washington, D.C. dedicated entirely to arts education. As YPT seeks to nurture a new generation of writers, three core programs offer children the opportunity to share their words with the world: the In-School Playwriting Program, which helps youth to find their voices by teaching them the art of playwriting using professional artists in the classroom; the After-School Playwriting Program, which brings a combination of playwriting and community activism to students ages 8-12; and the Youth or Dare Tour, a month-long professional tour of plays written by young people that reaches approximately 4,000 students and adults annually. Dynamic and effective programs like these have won YPT national and international recognition through awards, educational grants, and the press.

See more at  www.youngplaywrightstheater.org