Echo Theater Truck
Echo Theater Truck
Get on the truck
The Mission of the ECHO THEATER TRUCK is to explore non-traditional community engagement and pedagogy. The process would not only involve bringing theatre to BIPOC communities of Los Angeles, but also training BIPOC theatre educators to lead the truck. The ECHO THEATER TRUCK will address the issue of homogenized audiences through the use of active audience participation and innovative teaching.
We are committed to creating theater through unorthodox means. Our goal is to generate new spaces for unconventional audiences. Additionally, we want to collaborate with a variety of artists and community organizers/activists in ways that are not always possible due to the limitations of traditional theatre. The process would not only involve training a team of diverse artist-educators to bring theatre to the distinctive communities of Los Angeles but also enlisting the audience-participants in telling their own stories.
As part of the Echo’s mission to extend ourselves to our neighbors in Los Angeles, The TRUCK will address the challenges presented by the city’s gentrification while also confronting the unique problems that distance and isolation have created in Los Angeles.
The Artists:
Mataji Booker Graham is an LA native actor, writer & multi-disciplined artist. Her recent theater credits include Ron Athey’s Broad Museums production of ‘Gifts of the Spirit’, ‘Shade, A Colorful Musical Comedy’ at The Second City and Carmina Escobar’s ‘Bajo la Sombra del Sol/Under the Suns Shadow’ showcased at the Redcat’s Roy and Edna Disney/Cal Arts Theater. An eternal learner, Graham has trained with the Lula Washington Dance Theater, The SAG Conservatory, Robert Galinsky and Chris Fields of Echo Theater Company. For over ten years she has worked with young people on both coasts – training them in the art of Spoken word, Theater, Dance, and Film; further honoring her intention to give voice to the voiceless and to expand access to artistic healing.
BEN WENDEL
Ben’s work has been seen on stages from Los Angeles to London. They are so thrilled to be a part of the THTR TRUK!
Directors of Echo Theater Truck
ROBERT LEE HART is a MFA graduate from the Yale School of Drama, where his credits include The Seagull and Marty and the Hands That Could. Other credits include The Duchess of Malfi, Macbeth (California State University, Long Beach); The Laramie Project, Flowers for Algernon, and Electric Roses (El Camino College).
SKY PALEY is a film, TV, and stage actor who hails from the island of St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands.
Recent screen credits include Clover (2020) alongside Chazz Palminteri, Gangster Squad (Warner Bros.), Covert Affairs (USA Network), and Warehouse 13 (SyFy Network). He also starred opposite Stephen McHattie (Seinfeld) in the BravoFact short and sci-fi film fest fave, Manifold (2013) directed by Anthony Scott Burns.
Paley is perhaps best known for his critically acclaimed one-man play Antiman, which he first workshopped with The Echo. It premiered in Los Angeles in 2011 to positive notices from the LA Weekly (“…a Triumph!”). The play has since gone on to sold out performances in New York and Toronto with particular attention paid to his mesmerizing transformation into a local West Indian.
He has also directed The Echo’s productions of Tom & Eliza by Celine Song, Wrightwood Hookup by Wes Walker, A Walrus in the Body of a Crocodile by MJ Kaufman, and the Zoom production of Forget Me Not When Far Away by Kira Obolensky.