The Possibility Project brings together teenagers in diverse groups to transform the negative forces in their lives into positive action. Through a ten-month creative process, each group learns to build relationships across differences, resolve the serious conflicts they face, engage in changing their communities, and lead. To achieve these outcomes, they work together to write and perform an original musical from the stories of their lives and ideas for change. They also design and lead community action projects to make a difference on issues they care about. Since its inception in 2001, The Possibility Project has engaged 1,000 teenagers, produced 23 original musicals, and conducted more than 60 community action projects – and, 99% of 12th graders have graduated from high school, and 90% have gone on to college.
One of The Possibility Project’s three programs is exclusively for youth in foster care, one of our city’s most vulnerable populations. This fall, a group of 19 foster care youth wrote and rehearsed an original musical, “Promised,” based on their lives in care.
The show’s themes explore the challenges foster care youth face when confronted with the “spiritual crisis” that foster care provokes. Stories examined the relationship between foster youth and foster parents, the value of love for foster care youth, the costs of violence as a solution to bullying, and the conflicts for youth being raised by traditional parents in a modern, open society.
The foster care cast performed “Promised” for four nights at the Irondale Center Theatre in Brooklyn, inspiring hundreds of other youth in care as well as hundreds of adult New Yorkers.
The impact of the experience for participants was profound. As one cast member wrote, “To know that at every rehearsal, I can get away from my problems for three hours makes me feel blessed. I have learned how to be comfortable in my own skin and more open with my feelings. I know now that I am not alone in the world.”