TheatreWorkers Project (TWP) was conceived in 1983 by Susan Franklin Tanner. Funded by a grant from the California Arts Council and sponsored by the Steelworkers Oldtimers Foundation, the Project was housed in the Steelworkers Local 1845 Union Hall that had been repurposed as a food bank and community center after the closure of Bethlehem Steel in Vernon, California.

Tanner and a small staff of professional theatre artists worked with a core group of former steelworkers to create Lady Beth: The Steelworkers’ Play, which was performed locally and toured to 16 U.S. cities, co-sponsored by Bruce Springsteen. The project and the tour were profiled in the PBS documentary, “A Steel Life Drama.”

Subsequent to working with the steelworkers, Tanner and TWP developed and produced numerous documentary performance pieces with populations that included shipbuilders, meatpackers, Latino immigrant workers, critical care nurses, and longshoremen. TWP also sponsored discussions and events including “A Day’s Pay for a Day’s Art” and “Prison & Reentry Techniques Teacher Training.”

Over time, the work focused on Tanner’s collaborations with college students and young people which led to the creation of performance pieces about cultural diversity, personal identity, labor history, human rights, 9-11, and the Patriot Act. Other programs have included Youth-to-Youth, which utilized plays by young, emerging playwrights as a springboard for youth from underserved communities to respond to the content and create their own poetry and performance pieces. In 2009, TheatreWorkers Project partnered with the Shakespeare Center of Los Angeles to create Audition Prep workshops for students seeking to enter competitive high school and college programs. In 2010, Tanner and TWP launched Will Play, later named Shakespeare Remixed, a summer theatre experience for youth that operated for five years.

In 2016, Tanner received a California Arts Council (CAC) Artists in Communities grant to work with formerly incarcerated men through a partnership with Friends Outside in Los Angeles County at Dad’s Back! Academy. In collaboration with multiple TWP teaching artists, Tanner established the Moving Forward program with a CAC Reentry Through the Arts grant and continues to work with Dad’s Back!

In 2017, TWP received a California Humanities grant to create Lifer: Stories from the Inside/Out, a theatre program serving “Lifers” (men on parole from serving life sentences) at the Francisco Homes in South Los Angeles. Through Moving Forward and Lifer: Stories from the Inside/Out, TWP has led the creation of seven original theatre pieces based on the writing of, and performed by, reentering citizens. In 2018, TWP became a CAC Arts in Corrections contractor, bringing Life Stories from the Inside/Out to the California State Prison, Los Angeles County (LAC) in Lancaster. The theatre residency continues to serve men in the Progressive Programming Facility – “A” Yard with additional programming on “B” and “C” Yards.