AVAILABLE FOR TOURING IN 2025
Based on oral histories of families around the country whose lives have been shaped by guns, AAA is an evening of six short plays staged as if a radio theater company is performing a live broadcast.
Three actors navigate a forest of microphones while voicing dozens of characters.
A “Foley”artist (Froot) performs live sound effects with an eclectic collection of everyday objects. A three-piece band accompanies the action.
The performers share the stage with eight audience members seated at a kitchen table, who comment on the action as it is happening.
__________________________________
The Plays
___________________________
Tiffany
...an Air Force Reservist, writes a dissertation critiquing military-styled baby gear, but after Uvalde she bulletproofs her children’s backpacks.
___________________________
Gabriel
...a grad student in Native American Studies, finds himself in the middle of a bar brawl that morphs into an armed confrontation between cowboys and Indians…literally.
___________________________
June’s
...teenage son discovers a connection to his deceased dad through marksmanship. With mental illness running in the family, June has a tough decision to make.
___________________________
Aaron
After yet another mass shooting, a high school student challenges teacher Aaron to justify his self-definition as a “liberal gun nut.”
___________________________
Patricia
...a domestic gun violence survivor, encounters the practical limits of her faith when neighborhood shootings threaten her children’s safety.
___________________________
Rich
Fresh out of jail, Rich searches for the younger brother he mentored in their adolescence on the streets, and is shocked by what he finds.
Press Quotes
Gut-wrenching performances
The New York Times
Hard Truths and Creative Vision Add Up to Stunning Theatre
The Vineyard Gazette
I cannot imagine that one person left this remarkable show unaffected
Little Village, Cedar Rapids IA
This project is a valuable rebuke to the expanding escapism of contemporary theater.
The Arts Fuse
COMMUNITY PARTNERSHIPS
Community partnerships form the foundation of our work. Partners include arts presenters committed to the development of the work and community organizations whose missions touch on gun-related issues. By prioritizing cross-sector partnerships, we are working to inclusively engage culturally and politically diverse audiences. Partners include UCLA Center for the Art of Performance, The Myrna Loy Center, Miami Light Project, Guitars Over Guns, Empowered Youth, Veteran Resource Center, and The Office of Los Angele County Supervisor Kathryn Barger.
OUR MISSION
AAA is designed to promote empathy and dialogue by positioning audiences “between the ears” of participating families, and creatively interpreting their life-stories through sound: dialogue, music, and sound effects. We render complex theatrical portraits, illustrating families’ relationships to guns, without totalizing those families’ identities through those relationships. We combine documentary theater’s practice of sourcing scripts from oral histories, and investigatory theater’s productive tension between verbatim transcripts and formal experimentation.
THE PROCESS
We conduct six book-length oral histories of families in Southern California, Western Montana, and South Florida. Then we adapt those narratives into short plays or monologues (in consultation with the families themselves). The theater pieces are produced as a season of podcast episodes, and are then staged as live performances in the form of audio theater, or radio plays.
We aim for a constellation of stories that represent diverse scenarios, themes and perspectives. AAA focuses not on guns themselves, but on the ways that fear, power, identity, and entitlement are enacted through our relationships with guns, against the backdrop of socio-economic forces, culture wars, and other external circumstances.
Pictured is a moment from Pang! (2018), which is also built on a radio play model. Three actors voice dozens of characters while navigating a forest of microphones and tables overflowing with sound effects props.
THE TIMELINE
PHASE 1 (COMPLETED)
- DF&Co Establish partnerships with community organizations
- Partners pre-screen their constituent families for participation in the project, and consult with DF&Co to decide on which families to nominate.
- Virtual Residency #1: Oral History Consent Process. Family representatives will be walked through their rights and responsibilities, as well as the potential benefits and risks of the oral history process. Signed agreements will guarantee the boundaries of their participation.
- Oral History Interviews. A local artist, trained in oral history methodology by DF&Co, will conduct ten one-hour interviews with each of the two participating families. Every interview will be transcribed verbatim and made available to the respective families for approval and/or redaction.
- Virtual Residency #2: DF&Co further develop partnerships and community relations; DF&Co attend community gatherings and offer workshop programming tailored to community.
PHASE 2 (Spring 2022-Winter 2023)
- Adaptation of oral histories into podcast episodes: DF&Co will choose one oral history from each city to adapt into the form of an audio drama, and write a script based on that family’s story, in consultation with the family themselves.
- Virtual Residency #3:DF&Co further develop partnerships and community relations; DF&Co attend community gatherings and offer workshop programming tailored to community and read excerpts from early scripts.
PHASE 3 (Spring-Fall 2023)
- Podcast production: DF&Co record, edit, master, publish six podcast episodes: three audio dramas and a reflection on the issues and themes of each of them.
- In-person residencies #4 & #5
PHASE 4 (Fall 2023-Fall 2024)
- DF&Co adapt the podcast audio dramas into live theatrical performance pieces, in consultation with participating families.
- In-Person Residencies #6 and #7
- Premiere of Arms Around America
OUR VALUES
- Dialogue: We believe the free exchange of perspectives — between artists, audiences, community members, presenters, and funders — is vital to all stages of the artistic process, including research, creation, production, and post-production.
- Equity: We uphold the rights and stories of systematically oppressed people, including Black, Brown, Indigenous, Female, Queer, Trans and Non-Binary individuals.
- Shifting Narratives: We believe that stories are a critical form of knowledge that preserve traditions and forge new understandings. We believe that stories need to evolve and be reinvented as our social contexts change.
OUR STRATEGIES
- In order to promote safety during the pandemic, we conduct low-cost "virtual residencies," which include up to a week of day-long programming in a single community, repeated over the course of a couple of years of development, at zero or minimal cost to the presenter. During these visits we develop community partnerships and long-term relationships with community stakeholders and the families we work with. We develop the scripts in Los Angeles, in consultation with the families themselves.
- We bring world-class artists into close, consistent, and extended contact with communities.
- We train local artists as oral historians. We conduct several residencies in each community over the 3-year project.
- We maintain reciprocal relationships with community members throughout and beyond the project.
- We embed communities deeply inside our process.
ARTIST STATEMENT
Arms Around America experiments with the audio theater format we began exploring in Pang! (2017). Creating a work of national scope around such an urgent social issue challenges us as artists and activists to participate in wider socio-political discourses. Neither a pro- nor anti-gun project, Arms Around America is a pro-dialogue project.
As an oral historian, playwright, and producer, I am uniquely equipped to bring diverse communities into dialogue around difficult issues, and to contribute to greater empathy and understanding.
WHO WE ARE
Performance artist Dan Froot (he/him) has toured internationally since 1983. Awards include a Bessie (New York Dance & Performance Award), a City of Los Angeles Artist Fellowship, and a Foundation for Jewish Culture Playwriting Fellowship. He has worked with Dan Hurlin, Yoshiko Chuma, Ping Chong, David Dorfman, Mabou Mines, Ralph Lemon, and Victoria Marks. Dan teaches at UCLA's Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance.
Natalie Camunas (she/her) is a queer second-generation Latinx actor, playwright, and voice-over artist. Natalie works regionally in theatres across the country, including originating the World Premiere of American Mariachi . As a playwright, Natalie’s plays have been produced in Los Angeles, New York, and Ireland. nataliecamunas.com
Donna Simone Johnson (she/they) is an actress, choreographer and liberator, Co-Founder of Hardcorps. She is a series regular on Y'all Family and a Company Member of Oregon Shakespeare Festival. International credits include CITIZENSHIP in Kampala, Uganda, Echoes of a Thousand Hills, and with the award-winning CLOUD 9 (RITu, Liege, Belgium).
Bobby Gordon (Dramaturge, he/him) is a theater maker, photographer, and Theater of the Oppressed multiplier committed to the arts for social justice. Recent dramaturgical credits include Free Mind Free Style (Versastyle Dance Company at the Ford Amphitheater) 2021, and Pang! with the Dan Froot & Company (Various Venues, 2017).
OUR SUPPORTERS
Arms Around America is commissioned by The Center for the Art of Performance at UCLA. (Los Angeles CA), The Myrna Loy (Helena MT), Miami Light Project (Miami FL), and The National Performance Network (New Orleans LA).
The development of Arms Around America is made possible in part with funding by the New England Foundation for the Arts' National Theater Project, with lead funding from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and additional support from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts Art Works program, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors through the Los Angeles County Department of Arts and Culture, the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, the UCLA Office for Research & Creative Activities, the UCLA Chancellor’s Council on the Arts, and the National Performance Network's Community Fund. Arms Around America is a National Performance Network (NPN) Creation & Development Fund Project, co-commissioned by The Myrna Loy (Helena MT) in partnership with Miami Light Project (Miami FL), UCLA's Center for the Art of Performance, and NPN. The Creation & Development Fund is supported by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts (a federal agency).
For More Information:
Dan Froot | (310) 766-4942 | danfroot@me.com
danfroot.com | linktr.ee/pangpodcast | #pangpodcast
Credits:
David Hector Rosales and Monica McGivern