Youth Empowerment Performance Project ( YEPP ) encourages LGBTQ Chicago youths experiencing homelessness or housing instability to rewrite their lives, transforming each of their own stories of hardship and heartache into personalized performance pieces.
YEPP was established in 2011 to aid LGBTQ youth experiencing homelessness in exploring their history and to discover new ways to address their challenges and find strengths through theatrical performance. Each year, the group calls out for a group of five to seven youths aged 18-24. Combining theater with advocacy, the organization uses harm reduction, social justice, transformative justice and education for liberation ( theater of the oppressed and popular education ) frameworks to contain and guide the work.
"Something unique about this program is we are not looking for experts in theater, or dance, or movement, or visual arts," said YEPP co-founder and Executive Artistic Director Bonsai Bermudez. "We are just looking for young people ready to do self-work, ready to do introspective work in ways they can build their new selves."
For six months, members bring their in their stories, participating in individual/group healing and theatrical performance piece development. For the next six months, each ensemble member has the opportunity to tell their story with an their own artistic medium as they perform at different venues around the country, raising awareness and educating communities about LGBTQ street-based youth issues. Each performance concludes with audience talkbacks. Bermudez added they try to include the audience, sometimes inviting them up on stage.
"It's just perfect to come into this space and truly, deeply develop themselves," said Bermudez, who previously worked with queer youths at Broadway Youth Center. "I have noticed and learned that when people are safe in an environment, they bring their inner self—who they really are. This program is created to really have a safe space for them to bring who they are and not just to bring it, but to develop something that they can stay with and they can move in the future."
Made up of song, dance, movement, writing and other art forms, each ensemble member has a 10-to-15-minute segment. Bermudez acts as a curator of the performance, establishing a concept and finding common threads to transition the stories.
"I focus on their strengths—what they bring to the table and what they feel more connected with," said Bermudez. "People, in general, have different ways to heal and different ways to connect themselves. There are so many ways people have to cope and to find themselves. So, when I am processing things with them and building the performance, I focus on what they really want to do."
Bermudez said their hope for YEPP is to create a more solid foundation and potentially have these programs for next generations.
"This population is very talented and very powerful," said Bermudez. "They are visionaries, they are young people that would like to serve the world and serve their communities and to serve their family members and serve themselves. However, unfortunately, because oppression, because social issues, because sustaining harm and because society and because of systems that should be educating, but what they do is just to harm people—school for example, they finish up struggling and so much that then they cannot thrive, they cannot stay grounded, they cannot get what they deserve."
Kahari Gaiter has been involved with YEPP for two years. Gaiter grew up on the West Side of Chicago singing, dancing, acting and designing costumes since childhood. The ensemble appealed to Gaiter when seeing a previous performance as the art forms conveyed a therapeutic message.
"The most important part to me is it's not a typical theater group," said Gaiter. "It's actually another form of counseling. It's out there so we can help other people and at the same time help ourselves. That's the most important part to me. Somehow I'm even surprised some people are still alive and dealing with the people that hurt them. It makes me feel empowered. I'm around the people of the future who are going to make the change, that are going to be part of movements and revolutions."
Last year, Gaiter performed the story of growing up with a mother who was using drugs and the difficult experience to get simple things such as clothes, support and attending proper schools. Sharing such intimate details, as Gaiter described, was painful to revisit and difficult to share with an unfamiliar group. The feedback and support following the show encouraged Gaiter to continue with YEPP.
"Society tells you that you shouldn't allow people to see you sweat, you shouldn't allow people to see you cry," said Gaiter. "Don't tell people your business and all of that and then I experienced actually telling people my business, but also let them know how I overcame it and let them know that even though it was something bad that happened to me in my past, it made me stronger, it made me a beautiful person today. It's ok to be vulnerable because a lot of people look at it as weakness and I found strength in my vulnerability."
In this year's performance, entitled "FACES," Gaiter's story, delivered through monologue and song, is about coming out as gay to a minister father—which Gaiter described as conflicting and contradicting.
"Even though it's harder because I don't want to hurt the other peoples' feelings, I know that I'm going to feel relieved in the end," said Gaiter. "My feelings come before anyone else's. Me expressing myself may hurt people. There's so many more people out there like me that will feel empowered, that will understand where I'm coming from that really need the help. All of us should be in charge and in control of our own destinies."
"FACES" looks at the different faces society and systems have defined for the ensemble members versus the faces they strive to build and present for themselves. According to Bermudez, audiences will see a journey starting at self —deconstruction and finishing in a reconstruction of new and self-empowered identities. Topics addressed include: homelessness, spiritual struggles, trans physical-emotional development and HIV stigma among other topics. "FACES" will debut at Chicago's Free Street Theatre June 12-14. YEPP, for its third season, also has a Kickstarter campaign for donations to raise funds at kickstarter.com .
"My story this year, it connects to my current life," said Gaiter. "I'm telling everybody who I am and where I am in my life and everything that brought me to this point. It's hard for me to express this because I mention a lot of people and I mention the most influential people in my life and how they always told me what I should be and what I shouldn't be doing and now I'm expressing to all of them why I disagree with allowing someone else to tell me who to be."
To learn more about YEPP and "FACES," visit WeSayYEPP.com . Regarding the Kickstarter program, see www.kickstarter.com/projects/yepp/season-3-youth-empowerment-performance-project .
