In City at Peace, we use the performing arts as the vehicle by which teenagers enact their positive development and lead change in their communities.

Because the teenage years are an intense period of inevitable change and growth, the dynamic, interactive processes of the performing arts are a superb fit for teenagers. The performing arts provide a low-risk, metaphorical means for youth to examine and construct new ideas, new identities and new relationships, utilizing all of their capacities to harness these inherent changes toward creative ends. When this creating occurs in a diverse environment aimed at community action, the impact on their positive development is even greater.

Think of it this way: the concerns of the actor preparing a role parallel the concerns of a teenager preparing for an adult life. Just as a role emerges from an actor, so too, an adult emerges from a teenager.

But City at Peace is not just a process. The creation and production of original works of musical theater are important accomplishments that provide an accessible means for understanding the end-value of creative process and the skills for completing a project. These productions also provide a forum for addressing community issues, where teenagers take the raw materials of their lives and conflicts and transform them into performances, providing a road map for change for themselves and their audiences.

The processes and challenges of creating a performance that will be witnessed by audiences parallel the processes and challenges of creating change in communities. Just as a show emerges from the vision of the teenagers and leads to a finished performance, so too community actions emerge from their vision of a better world and lead to improvements in communities, both now and in the future.

Skill-Building
Both through the process and through achieving an original performance, participants learn skills that are also invaluable.

Voice - Not only do participants learn the technical skills of voice for the stage, but also the metaphorical concept of voice in speaking out against injustice, corruption or disrespect and speaking up for their beliefs and their vision of a better world. By writing and then performing their own shows, participants develop a voice, in writing and in performing, and learn how to be heard and understood.

Physical awareness - The teenage years are abundant in physical changes. These changes can produce negative results if they are left to chance. Through the intense physical activity of acting, dance and music, participants grow their sense of control and awareness of their bodies that makes these changes productive.

Collaboration - Called "ensemble" in the theater, collaboration is an essential ingredient for any group performing art. Participants must necessarily learn to work together. Not just be with each other, but to actually get something done. They must be responsible, reliable and accountable to one another if they are to succeed. Along the way, they learn how to build working relationships - and given the diversity in City at Peace, working relationships with individuals very different from themselves - that are aimed at accomplishment.

Discipline - Whether it is rehearsing scenes or dances or music, participants learn the importance, and gain the experience, of persistent training and specificity of focus. Participants learn techniques and then the consistent practice that leads to excellence.

Creativity - The performing arts treat creativity as a "muscle". That is, everyone has some capacity to create and the key to developing one's creativity is exercising it. Participants learn all of the elements of creativity - imagination, narration, concentration, revision - by producing shows that are real, tangible and very hard work.

Improvisation - The ability to create without a "script". Participants learn how to create from their own ideas without anyone providing them with the words or the actions. The ability to improvise onstage directly translates to the ability to adapt offstage, an essential skill for teenagers whose lives and beings are changing so much. For a teenager looking at adulthood, life resembles an improvisation - no script, no playwright, and you have to do something. Yet, there is uncertainty about what to do and how to do it. For anyone, but most especially for teenagers, learning to improvise well is learning to cope with life and its uncertainty.

Emotional competency - For most youth, the adolescent years are an emotional time no matter what the circumstances. Increased responsibility coupled with the vulnerability of inexperience makes for a daily roller-coaster ride of emotions. This ride often plays out in destructive forms. But this emotional intensity is not inherently negative. The emotional pitch inherent in acting can transform this potential negativity into positive ends. Acting doesn't just play with this emotional pitch; it demands it. While demanding it, it also teaches an ever-increasing control over the outcomes of emotional response in order to create a clear form of expression. The skills of acting show the way to this mastery, allowing a safe environment in which participants can explore their emotional range and gain competency in understanding, expressing and harnessing their emotions.

Conflict resolution - Theater is, in many ways, telling stories of conflict. Utilizing narrative construction to understand conflict in the stories they are telling, participants learn how to "change the story" by trying out different possible resolutions to conflicts. This is not done in a limited workshop setting, but through in-depth analysis of root causes and the experimentation of different strategies for achieving resolutions. In the construction of their shows, which are based on their real-life experiences, participants deepen this exploration and make decisions about what can really work to resolve the conflicts they face.

Public speaking - Standing in front of an audience and communicating a message can be a frightening experience for anyone. Participants learn the skills for preparing, executing and evaluating public performances, strengthening their ability to speak before any audience.

Excellence - There are few opportunities for youth to experience what it means to produce "excellence". By creating shows that premiere in important venues and are heard by parents, friends and leaders, participants learn how to strive for excellence and to achieve it. In City at Peace, excellence, like creativity, is a capacity that everyone has, and it is practiced as a skill to be learned rather than an elusive, exclusive innate quality.

The skills learned through the artistic experiences of City at Peace allow participants to "own" their lives and experiences. Through the discipline, self-awareness, liberation, and pressure of acting, dancing, singing, and improvisation, a young person learns to "own" him or her self. Through the thrill and learning of collaboration and unity, he or she begins to "own" his or her relationships. Through City at Peace, he or she learns to overcome conflicts and prevent them for him or her self and others in the future.

A Model for Change
After the show is done, the value of the performing arts in City at Peace doesn't stop. In fact, many alumni have articulated that it is in reflection on the City at Peace experience that they gain the most valuable insights. This is attributable to one of the most important overarching perspectives used in the City at Peace process: that the theatrical creative process is a model for change.

For many youth, change is much-desired and at the same time feels out of reach. It can be confusing, uncertain and insecure. Soon, many cannot imagine themselves ever "getting it together" or "making it", or at least feeling good about whom they are becoming or even how the world is developing.

In looking back at the City at Peace creative process, participants begin to grasp how the process happened. And they are soon able to make the connection from their experience of creating a show to how anything can be transformed, whether it be friendships, family relationships, community conflicts, or their own path for living. They recognize, most importantly, that it is a process, usually a long-term process that requires the same skills and perspectives and patience that a show requires.

Understanding this creative process that leads to performance can be a key to unlocking a participant's frustration with the necessary creative process of change. They learn that they can take the same approach to their lives and their communities, apply themselves "like it's a show", achieve the same level of impact on the "audience", and gain the same increase in "self-confidence that they get from "the performance". In other words, they recognize that this "creating something from nothing but ourselves" mirrors the process of change.

Through the performing arts, the sometimes elusive process of change becomes real, practical, tangible. Participants in the process feel their bodies working, they feel their voices growing, they feel their peers moving and singing next to them, they breathe with intensity, they sense their cast from so many different backgrounds pulling for them backstage, they feel the audience watching, laughing, crying. They act their stories because they have something very specific they want to say, and they say it and shout it and sing it with the passion of needing to be understood, to be heard, to matter and to make a difference.

Their work is theater, containing light, and movement, and sound, and action. And it is "graspable". And by being "graspable", it makes sense and becomes real. In this way, the seemingly impossible challenge of changing anything becomes real and attainable. For many, it then becomes a goal. For some, a life's work. For all, it is the hard work of creation that feels like magic, gives us real hope, and is the overall value of the performing arts in City at Peace.