Truthworker Theatre Company: Youth Voices Against the School to Prison Pipeline
By Rajul Punjabi
“Almost every member of the Truthworker company has a family member who is currently or has been incarcerated,” says the company’s founder, Samara Gaev. “That was not a prerequisite. That just happens to be the case.”
Founded in July of 2013, the Truthworker Theatre Company brings together young people between the ages of 15 to 22 to create, write, and perform in productions that reflect stories from their own lives as well as those entangled in the prison industrial complex — stories that are often discounted and disregarded.
Choosing young people to produce and tell these narratives is an important part of Truthworker’s mission. Gaev believes that the voices about imprisonment that are given an audience do not often represent youth perspectives. Gaev, a New York City-based performance artist and educator could be the spiritual lovechild of activist Angela Davis and the Dalai Lama. Her militancy trumps her zen though, as she rejects the idea of accepting the things she cannot change. More like Davis, she’s decided to change the things that she just cannot accept. After nearly a decade in the New York City school system as a teaching artist, Gaev witnessed many of her students yearning for more opportunities to continue sharing their stories and growing professionally and personally through creative expression. In response, Gaev envisioned Truthworker as a space where those aspirations could become reality. Many of the company’s members include students that Gaev has previously worked with as a teaching artist.
Truthworker’s first production, “BAR CODE: A Performative Analysis of the School to Prison Pipeline,” explores the criminalization of young people, which, as an arts educator, Gaev says she’s had a front row seat. It includes dance, poetry, hip-hop music, as well as traditional dramatic monologues.
Gaev believes that at a very tender age, young people are immediately sent the message that they are not to be trusted, that they are a threat to be contained. “I walk into schools and kids have to go through metal detectors and empty their pockets. On either side of them are school safety agents, which are in full police uniforms.” In “BAR CODE,” the company explores the dual systems within schools and prisons — schools run on bell systems just as in prison; the same corporation distributes food in prison also provides school lunches.
