About the Project
Battling the GearMonster is the story of defending one’s “home” , which in this fable, is represented by the two dimensional castle. The characters are proud and funny, comedic and complex: Theater, while certainly a way of pushing people’s comfort zones, often is (and should be) a place of comfort and safety for people. Shame and isolation are tools of oppression, and representation and normalization of different lives combats them.
Battling the GearMonster uplifts through comedy, physical humor, while uniting all in the battle to be heard in a cold world.
Homelessness in LA is a pandemic that harms all citizens. Homelessness is on a meteoric rise, with families forced to stay home to distance learn, finding the basics of survival have become increasingly difficult, and are surprisingly expensive. Attempting to battle poverty, the homeless become demoralized, depressed, angry, bitter, desperate, states of being examined in Battling the GearMonster
The bizarre “solutions’ from LA officials (such as the $100,000 price tag of EACH “tiny homes” of San Pedro that have yet to be occupied, to homeless agencies as LAFH who continue to fail their population, to real life scams and experiences of poverty in Los Angeles.
All these horrors have been experienced by our homeless playwright firsthand, who is an advocate for this marginalized community. It is a terrible state of mind that infects hundreds thousands of Americans daily. Instead of being treated as victims of trauma, they are re-traumatized daily by bureaucrats to police. Americans shouldn’t have to eat out dumpsters, live in vermin infested homes, buy their children Christmas presents from the Goodwill, turn towards drugs and crime as a way out of poverty, or to go without the most basic needs of food and shelter.
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Production Team
