History & Board Info

Watts Village Theater Company. Three people are hand in hand. Background is Watts Towers.

Actor and Watts community activist Quentin Drew and actor/playwright Lynn Manning founded WVTC in 1996 as an outgrowth of Cornerstone Theater Company’s residency in Watts. The company's earliest endeavor was to conduct acting and performance workshops for at-risk youth in Watts’s housing projects, culminating in public talent shows. Since then, WVTC has produced readings and full productions at venues such as the Mafundi Center, Watts Towers Arts Center, LATC, Inside at the Ford and the Matrix Theatre. WVTC's 2003 production of Manning's “Private Battle” won a NAACP Theatre Award. “Up From the Downs” (2005), and “Ochre & Onyx” (2009) received critical acclaim for examining cross-cultural relations between Latinos and African-Americans in Watts.

Upon Drew's passing in 2005, Watts native Guillermo Aviles-Rodriguez became Artistic Director. Recognizing its commitment to developing work by emerging LA-based playwrights of color, WVTC began Black Words on White Pages (BWWP) in 2006. A development process involving collaboration between an emerging playwright, director and performers, and culminating in public readings, the series continues twice annually. Through internships and education, WVTC seeks to promote literacy and self-empowerment among Watts’s youth. In 2008, WVTC instituted the Quentin Drew Memorial (QDM) Internship Program, which hires at-risk youth from Watts to assist in the production of WVTC’s shows, to receive training in various aspects of theater production. During this time, Managing Director Damion Teeko Parran oversaw the company's restoration to fiscal health, its first successful fundraising event, and first strategic plan.

In 2009, David Mack was appointed Managing Director. WVTC received the Second District Human Relations Award for nearly 15 years of mounting productions that focus on inter-group conflict and inter-group relations. In May 2010, WVTC launched Meet Me @Metro (M3). Endorsed by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and LA County Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas and sponsored by the LA Metropolitan Transportation Authority (Metro) and the Metro Art Docent Council, M3 featured site-specific theatrical productions along Metro in collaboration with six cutting-edge theatre companies throughout LA and New York. In 2011, the company produced the second annual Meet Me @Metro and affirmed its intention to collaborate annually with Metro to continue to create site specific performance works that engage the diverse artistic partners with intentional and accidental audiences from throughout greater Los Angeles in a journey of creative discovery of our shared communities.

In 2011, WVTC received the American Theatre Wing's National Theatre Company Award as one of the top 10 most promising small theatre companies on the country. WVTC is currently a participant in the Annenberg Foundation's Alchemy+ Leadership Training Program.

Board of Directors:

Farid Ben Amor

David Catanzarite

Raquel Cinat

Derrick Everett

Karen Lascaris

Lynn Manning (Chair)

Judith Moreland (Vice Chair, Secretary)

Karen Rushfield

Julie Siegel

Leslie Tamaribuchi (Treasurer)

Stephen Wang