In October 2023, FIPPP started a new, two-year partnership as the Company-in-Residence at Berkeley Repertory Theatre!
Directed and produced by Mark Kenward, with co-direction by Rebecca Fisher, Wayne Harris and Mark McGoldrick, FIPPP features formerly incarcerated performers telling stories about their life experiences. FIPPP held our first festival with performers Tony Cyprien, Freddy Lee Johnson, Pamela Anne Keane, Pearl Louise, Pastor Ronnie Muniz and Al Sasser at PianoFight Oakland in October 2021. We held a Summer Workshop Performance series in May 2022 with Freddy Lee Johnson, Pamela Ann Keane, Pearl Louise and new FIPPP performer, Scott Schell, on stage. And we held our Power of Storytelling in October 2022, a full festival back at PianoFight Oakland in January 2023 and an FIPPP ENCORE performance at Berkeley Rep's School of Theatre in February 2023! Our first Master Class series at Berkeley Rep started in October 2023 with our FIPPP directors and guest lecturers Dan Hoyle (character) and Candace Johnson (voice). In 2024, we will be holding Workshop Performances in May, with special solo nights of performance in fall 2024. And FIPPP will be back with our next full festival in 2025!
Hearing stories from those who have been incarcerated fosters compassion and understanding about the circumstances and choices that led them to incarceration, what they endured and learned inside, and the hard won success of their lives after incarceration. Their stories give hope for the human condition and our ability to reform and reinvent ourselves, as well as giving us the opportunity as a society to reconsider the inhumane conditions that prisoners often endure. Each of them brings to this project previous experience as a performer, writer, and/or public speaker, in addition to their inspiring work of now helping others deal with issues of reentry, substance abuse, housing and homelessness.
This project is funded in part by a Theater Bay Area CA$H grant, the Ronald Whittier Family Foundation and donors who enjoy the work. We were pleased to receive a grant from the Alameda County Arts Commission Arts Fund in 2022 and a CA$H Sustains Grant from Theater Bay Area in 2022 and 2023.
Hearing stories from those who have been incarcerated fosters compassion and understanding about the circumstances and choices that led them to incarceration, what they endured and learned inside, and the hard won success of their lives after incarceration. Their stories give hope for the human condition and our ability to reform and reinvent ourselves, as well as giving us the opportunity as a society to reconsider the inhumane conditions that prisoners often endure. Each of them brings to this project previous experience as a performer, writer, and/or public speaker, in addition to their inspiring work of now helping others deal with issues of reentry, substance abuse, housing and homelessness.
This project is funded in part by a Theater Bay Area CA$H grant, the Ronald Whittier Family Foundation and donors who enjoy the work. We were pleased to receive a grant from the Alameda County Arts Commission Arts Fund in 2022 and a CA$H Sustains Grant from Theater Bay Area in 2022 and 2023.
