ABOUT US
Mission Statement
Indecent Exposure (IndEx) is a non-profit theater company dedicated to creating progressive art for the stage. IndEx strives for social change through the development of artistically excellent and thematically exciting work. To implement this goal, IndEx explores vital social issues and seeks to address the urgent concerns of diverse communities. The company has created cabaret material, and original plays using music, comedy, history and dramatic exploration.
IndEx has developed a repertoire of high-quality, engaging, and versatile stage material that speaks to a broad cross-section of the population. IndEx believes popular art can reach heights of expression which speak to all people: young, old, women, men, gay, straight, and all ethnicities. The artistic collaborators at IndEx (writers, directors, actors, designers, and producers) reflect this rich diversity.
Company History
IndEx developed in Los Angeles in the late 1980’s in a politically and culturally conservative climate; the company’s founders, recognizing the need for progressive voices in this environment, created IndEx to speak to a broad audience as diverse as Los Angeles itself.
Since 1988, members of IndEx have written, produced, and performed theatrical/musical material at the Los Angeles Theatre Center (LATC), Highways, Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, New Works at the Mark Taper Forum, Common Ground at Audrey Skirball-Kenis, The Music Machine, The Keck Theater, UCLA, USC and throughout the Cal State College system. IndEx has had work presented at Baltimore Center Stage (2006) and New York Theater Workshop 2005).
During its residence at LATC from 1995-2000, IndEx developed and produced workshops and full productions of six original plays. The company simultaneously developed interactive educational workshops and programs for multi-cultural college-based audiences.
The major accomplishments of The Company include the development, production, and/or performance or implementation of:
- Dramatic and narrative material on reproductive rights for performers including Danny Glover, Alfre Woodard, Whoopi Goldberg, Regina Taylor, and political activists including Gloria Steinem and Dolores Huerta.
- Angels on Fire, a dramatic presentation that explored the Rodney King trial and its explosive repercussions on LA.
- Life and Death: The Vaudeville Show, a cabaret/musical that toured the island of Cuba as an invited guest of the Cuban International Cultural Festival.
- A writing and self-expression workshop for homeless women at Weingart Center in downtown L.A.
- club termina, an original play with music based on playwright Susan Rubin's personal encounter with breast cancer. The World Premiere of club termina garnered awards and laudatory reviews.
- Annual free-of-charge dramatic readings of club termina at the Los Angeles Theater Center, with outreach targeting disadvantaged women.
- In 2006, IndEx was invited to Baltimore Center Stage to present a staged reading with music of club termina as a fundraiser for East Coast breast cancer support groups.
Other IndEx works that have been developed, workshopped, and/or fully produced in Los Angeles include Rubin’s Ovation-nominated, Immortality, Mysteries in a Silver Box, and The Trial of Persephone, also presented in 2005 at New York Theater Workshop.
IndEx’s dramatic reading series at Bootleg Theater has included plays by: Hilly Hicks about African-American and Latino high school students; Eva Anderson, whose play Wild Boy went on to New York’s Fringe Festival; and Peter Harris’s Johnson Chronicles, which attracted a capacity crowd in its exploration of the myths of African-American male sexuality.
Rubin’s World Premiere production of BITCH produced in 2007 at Bootleg Theater garnered awards and played to diverse audiences and critical acclaim. BITCH is the first play in a trilogy, (working title, the USA Trilogy) currently being developed by IndEx playwright and Artistic Director Rubin in collaboration with IndEx directors and designers.
Parts Two and Part Three of Rubin’s USA Trilogy are slated for production in Los Angeles’ West side Odyssey Theater and on the East side in the Ramparts District at Bootleg Theater. In addition, BITCH is being considered for production at the Hourglass Theater in New York City.