To Protect, Serve and Understand
Welcome to Round 7
In 2015 Irondale invited the New York Police Department to join them in developing a community program that would use theatrical improvisation to build communication and empathy between officers and the communities they are charged to protect and serve. Over a period of ten weeks, seven officers and seven community members come together to eat, talk, and play together. They learn to improvise, tell their own stories, and “step into each other’s shoes.” The workshops culminate in original and spontaneous public performances that show what can come from mutual trust and empathetic understanding.
These workshops are recorded by documentary filmmakers from the award winning production company, Press and the Public Project, and used for internal training by the NYPD. The raw footage will be available for a documentary film for national distribution. See the series here.
For more information contact Executive Director Terry Greiss at 718-488-9233
What they Say
Thank You for Your Support
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This project is supported in part by funding from the Brimstone Award as administered by the National Storytelling Network.
This project is also supported with funds from
- Charles & Mildred Schnurmacher Foundation
- The Jean and Louis Dreyfus Foundation
- Malcolm & Dorothy Knapp
- Slate Realty Arts and Culture Fund (S.P.A.C.E)
The Laura B. Vogler Foundation - New York City Department of Cultural Affairs
- National Endowment for the Arts
- Brimstone Foundation National Storytelling Network
The Press
- Featured by NPR, the New Yorker and the Wall Street Journal
- Winner of the Brimstone Applied Storytelling Award
- 11.02.18 – BK Reader: Theater Company Gathers Cops and Civilians to Break Bread and Barriers
- 02.01.17 – Storytelling magazine report
- 12.31.16- Jeff Lunden’s report on NPR
- 10.2.16 – Newsday review
- 7.19.16 – Nonprofit Quarterly Improv for Cops and Other Artistic Approaches to BLM and Gun Control
- 7.2.2016 – The New Yorker Improv for Cops
- 2.4.2016 – The Wall Street Journal Police and the Public Bridge Gap on Stage
- 2.3.2016 – BrooklynPaper.com Working blue: Police perform in improv show
- 1.26.2016 – BRIC/BK Live video on To Protect, Serve, and Understand Project
- 12.1.2015 – DNAinfo.com Improving Police-Community Relations Once Improv at a Time
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It’s Easy to Get to Irondale
in the heart of Brooklyn’s Cultural District
85 South Oxford Street
Fort Greene, Brooklyn 11217