Red Ladder is a nationally acclaimed, award-winning social justice theatre company.
Founded on the understanding that the most essential component of a healthy individual is the creative spirit, Red Ladder exists to connect our most vulnerable community members with their own creativity — igniting their imaginations and amplifying their voices — empowering them to tell their own stories.
Our Goals
By working with the professional actors in the company, participants are encouraged to explore the issues that affect their daily lives and, by engaging in the creative process, develop the ability to make positive choices, solve problems creatively, focus on tasks, and work collaboratively. Through our performance/workshops, we help participants understand that by employing their creativity and believing in their own imaginations, they have the power to accomplish anything. They are able to invest in their own ideas and bring them to life on stage. That knowledge and understanding then translates into a new-found ability to confront the challenges they face every day. It is why we say of Red Ladder that it is “a rehearsal for a healthy life.” Learn More
Our Impact
Since its inception in 1992, Red Ladder has been dedicated to serving a wide range of under-resourced and disenfranchised populations within the community, including youth and adults experiencing incarceration, pregnant and parenting teens, homeless and runaway youth, young people in the foster system, developmentally disabled youth and adults, drug recovery program participants, returned citizens, seniors, and community service leaders. Using the tools and techniques of improvisational/devised theatre, the company fills the void where the resources to nurture life-skills critical to the healthy development of children, and enrichment programs for struggling adults, are not available. Learn More.
“Red Ladder is one of the most innovative arts programs helping to implement social change.”
and helping under-resourced community members find their voices by connecting with their creativity.
igniting their imaginations and allowing them to envision a brighter tomorrow, full of possibility.
have been provided the opportunity to develop positive life-skills and transform their futures.
Our Partners
The key to successful program delivery is effective community partnerships. Red Ladder works to forge meaningful partnerships with community organizations in an effort to provide a network of services to its participant groups. Schools, social service organizations, government agencies, grass roots organizations and others pool resources and share information to ensure that Red Ladder’s participants are receiving support specific to their individual needs.
Red Ladder provides creative engagement opportunities to a wide range of groups within the community – from seniors in our Japantown neighborhood to veterans and their families or youth in the foster system. In an effort to serve those most in need of the kind of programming Red Ladder offers, and to provide our participants with the most comprehensive services possible, the company has always sought and cultivated meaningful community partnerships with service agencies who work with these individuals on a daily basis – who understand their needs and the network of support required for them to achieve long-term, lasting and meaningful skill development. Through these partnerships, Red Ladder becomes an integral part of the agency’s and the community’s programming and we work together to make sure that the needs of our participants are being met.
Red Ladder Theatre Company has a long-standing history of serving both youth and adults experiencing incarceration, with great success. These participants have often grappled with multiple and interrelated issues such as substance abuse, literacy and language barriers, employment challenges, troubled or abusive home lives, housing instability and the like, and often lack the resources to aide them in their efforts to positively affect their own circumstances. Through restorative justice techniques and Red Ladder’s focus on creative collaboration in an atmosphere free from judgement, participants impacted by the carceral system are able to visualize opportunities, imagine positive outcomes, and discover within themselves the strength to transform their dreams into reality
Red Ladder has become a leader in performing arts curriculum development. Many of the schools with whom Red Ladder works have limited or non-existent arts education programs. Red Ladder understands the power of the arts to reach students, especially those with non-traditional learning styles, and help them make sense of the world around them. The company was deemed a Demonstration Project by the California Arts Council, and has developed a broad range of activities that meet the State of California’s Visual and Performing Arts (VAPA) Standards and are in line with the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). Further, Red Ladder successfully executes curriculum based on the Studio Thinking Framework/Studio Habits of Mind with its participants.
For years, Red Ladder has provided professional development workshops for artists and educators. Hundreds of individuals have been trained through workshops that the company has led at annual conferences such as the Marion Cilker Conference for Arts Education (“The Arts Really Teach”), the Arts in Your Classroom Conference at Montalvo Arts Center, CCSESA’s Creativity at the Core Summer Institute, the One Theatre World (OTW) conference, as well as through the Santa Clara County Office of Education’s “Artspiration” initiative, the South Bay Arts Education Collaborative, the California Arts Project, the City of San Jose’s Arts Express program, in addition to workshops that the company has offered directly to participants. As part of this training, the company has developed a theatre arts activities handbook for use by other practitioners.
Red Ladder Theatre Company conducts workshops that assist organizations with the development of creative thinking, problem solving, communication, collaboration, team building, and leadership skills – the very skills necessary to be effective and competitive in the corporate world. Through active, high energy workshops in the creative process, Red Ladder helps groups and companies expand their creative horizons and re-energize their corporate team environments. Red Ladder has worked with organizations such as eBay, Cisco, KPMG, Hopkins & Carley, and others to develop trust, spontaneity, communication, creativity and outside-of-the-box thinking skills.
“I’d still be in Juvenile Hall right now if it weren’t for the Red Ladder Theatre Company. They taught me how to use my imagination and they were the only ones who believed in me.”
“Red Ladder staff and company members are truly multi-talented professionals who have all the qualities, patience and understanding to work with special needs students.”
Our Team
The Red Ladder Theatre Company is made up of a troupe of multi-ethnic, multi-lingual professional actors who are committed to serving the community in positive ways through the art form of theatre.
