Stargate Theatre pays at-risk youth to script and stage performance pieces. Their aim: to reduce recidivism, teach literacy and provide work experience that looks far better on a CV than jail time.

An alternative-to-incarceration program recommended Thompson to Stargate, a pilot project founded last year by the prestigious Manhattan Theatre Club (MTC), which produces Broadway and Off-Broadway plays. The unconventional Stargate theater troupe pays “court-involved” and at-risk teenage boys (most participants have committed low-level crimes) to stage a performance piece in a quest to reduce recidivism, teach literacy and provide work experience that looks far better on a CV than time in jail. The cast members — who applied to be part of the program — worked for a minimum of 12 hours a week for six weeks last summer to develop an autobiographical show, which they performed at New York City Center – Stage II, a sleek theater in Midtown Manhattan. 

“We’re hiring these young men to be members of a theater company,” says David Shookhoff, education director of the Manhattan Theatre Club and an acclaimed director, most recently of the Off-Broadway hit “Breakfast With Mugabe.” “Their job is to write and to perform and to operate as an ensemble.” Shookhoff believes Stargate’s seven charter members learned to be timely, collegial and cooperative, valuable traits in the workplace.

Shookhoff, 69, conceived Stargate in 2010 while brainstorming over poached eggs with Evan Elkin, 52, then an executive at the Vera Institute of Justice, a nonprofit policy research group in New York, and now a consultant specializing in criminal justice reform.

To read more of David Wallis' article, please click here.