Arms Around America
What is Arms Around America and what are its goals?
Arms Around America is a project of Los Angeles-based theater group, Dan Froot & Co. We conducted book-length oral histories of families whose lives have been shaped by guns, in South Florida, Montana and Southern California. We are adapting those families’ stories into a podcast (summer of 2024), and a live theater work to be performed in each family's home community and around the country, premiering in Los Angeles in the fall of 2024.
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You can check out our current podcast season by clicking here. It's part of a project called Pang!. Pang! is based on the stories of real families around the country living with hunger or food insecurity. You can also watch excerpts from Pang! by clicking here. The process for Arms Around America will be very similar to Pang!, so you can get a sense of where this project is going.
By opening a window into families’ lives, we hope to explore diverse perspectives and foster dialogue around the complex roles that guns play in our society. We hope that this project can help us all learn how to talk to each other (rather than talking ateach other) about gun-related issues.
We feel that guns are a major issue in our country, and that lives depend on learning to listen to each other's experiences and perspectives.
There are plenty of statistics about guns. We would like to introduce each other to some of the people, and stories, behind the facts and figures.
We believe that telling our own and listening to others' stories decreases fear and increases respect and understanding, and that this can move us toward productive dialogue.
Who are our partners for Arms Around America?
Who supports Arms Around America?
Arms Around America is a National Performance Network (NPN) Creation & Development Fund Project co-commissioned by The Myrna Loy, Miami Light Project, UCLA’s Center for the Art of Performance, and NPN. The Creation & Development Fund is supported by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts (a federal agency). For more information: npnweb.org
This program is made possible 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, and by a grant from the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, and by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors through the Los Angeles County Department of Arts and Culture.
