Like other popular social issues productions like “RENT” and “JUVIE,” “SHADOW KIDZ” is out to prove that theater can help raise awareness and ultimately inspire change.
“Shadow Kidz” is a true story based on the experiences of it’s writer Keith Brown and his friends, who were foster kids and immigrant children who age out of care at eighteen. The story follows the lives of these kids who have be
en displaced from their parents under different circumstances, and are placed into a placement center set up by private contractors who’s job is to place them in suitable homes. They share a common bond of friendship over the course of time, despite constant separation and profound hardship. Audience members quickly learn that the system that was set up to protect them is nothing more but a multi billion dollar organization that trades kids like commodities. Attach a budget figure to a kid and the result is often kickbacks, over-medication, and in some cases institutionalization.
“Shadow Kidz” also focuses on the critical subject of aging out. Statistics show that kids are not prepared for the real world when the system cuts them off at eighteen with less than half of them graduating High school. Seventy seven percent of all foster kids will experience homelessness and hunger, among men more than half will be convicted of a crime and among women more than three quarters will become victims of sexual assault. Eighty two percent of inmates in our prison system have been in foster care.
