DreamStreet believes that every actor should explore other forms of art to enrich their craft and become a well-rounded performer.  We offer regular creative and performing arts workshops for current cast members and the greater community of people with developmental disabilities.

NEIGHBORHOOD workshops

dreamstreet dance

In response to participant requests, on the organization's 20-year anniversary in 2018, DreamStreet Artistic Director Miriam Wasmund worked with participants to form DreamStreet’s first Dance Collaborative.  Dance has been an ongoing, integral piece of DreamStreet’s large scale productions since 1998 and is at the heart of its founding origins.  Wasmund led the new Collaborative in its debut at the Organization's 20th Anniversary Gala, in a spectacular, moving performance that paid homage to the daily lives of DreamStreet participants and to DreamStreet's late founder, Karuna Heisler. 

storytelling

the platform project

The Platform Project offers adults with developmental disabilities a devised therapeutic theatre initiative. Through exercises that facilitate sharing stories of their own lived experiences with a group of their peers, cast members create and combine their personal stories into a script that they rehearse and perform themselves.  They also design, direct, and choreograph the entire production, with assistance from DreamStreet teaching artists, thereby giving ownership of the performance to those whose lives are being represented and ensuring that their perspectives and experiences are shared with integrity.  The public performance is a unique, holistic opportunity for self-representation by the performers, enabling audiences to engage with their experiences through the perspectives of community members themselves. 

original poetry

film

The EmployAbility Project

The EmployAbility Project launched in 2018 for participants seeking a deeper engagement with various professional aspects of theater production, such as choreography, stage management, script-writing, and directing.  This project nurtures these talents in participants, provides them with additional training, and builds each participant’s skillset with an eye toward enabling them to get paying jobs in the theater industry.  Simultaneously, DreamStreet is cultivating relationships with industry employers who have an interest in hiring adults with disabilities.  Together, we are expanding the horizons of DreamStreet participants to pursue as full a professional theater experience as their talents and interests allow, while transforming the theater and film industry into a more inclusive, welcoming place for everyone who has something to contribute to it. Our participants have held roles in films like Good Time, with Robert Pattinson and Benny Safdie, and TV shows such as Ryan Murphy’s American Horror Story: NYC.

shakespeare