Past Special Projects

Check some of our past works below.

“What is the music inside you?”

Karen Zacarias explored this question in her innovative piece African Roots/Latino Soul. 

Students from MacFarland Middle School and Bell Multicultural High School provided original writing on their African, Latino and Caribbean heritage. Karen Zacarias molded their work into African Roots/Latino Soul presented by the Smithsonian Institution’s Discovery Theater in October 2006 and produced again in October 2007 in response to viewer demand.

Inspired by the National Portrait Gallery’s traveling art exhibit Retratos: 2,000 Years of Latin American Portraits, YPT’s Retratos was commissioned by the Smithsonian’s Discovery Theater. 

More than 60 students from Bancroft Elementary, Oyster Elementary and Lincoln Middle school created stories, dialogues and monologues in response to the exhibit’s paintings. Students were invited to imagine the lives of those in the portraits. 

The resulting play, compiled by Karen Zacarias was a celebration of Hispanic history and culture, performed in October 2005.

Written by Bell Multicultural High School students in reaction to the Holocaust, Choices was a life-changing experience for many of its writers. 

After reading Elie Weisel’s Night and through pen-pal relationships with the Kfar HaNoar Mozenson school students in Hod HaSharon, Israel, the Bell students were inspired to express their own struggles with violence and loss. Karen Zacarias worked with them to create Choices. Students told of losing their houses to arson, and holding dying friends in their arms as a means of trying to imagine the degree of loss and sacrifice endured by those targeted during the Holocaust, as well as their resolve. 

Choices was directed by Abel Lopez and performed at Theater J in 2004.

Students interviewed community members about their experiences and memories of the park.

Their play Holy Ghosts: Stories from Meridian Hill was performed in Meridian Hill Park in 2001 by professional actors.

The slideshow below will begin automatically. Roll over the image to change the speed of the slideshow. Click on the image to view details and captions for any photo. You can also visit the full album of Special Projects photos on Flickr.