Fringe Benefits is an educational theatre company dedicated to early hate crime prevention. Our mission is to replace hate with understanding through collaboratively created plays, videos and programs that promote constructive dialogue about diversity and discrimination issues. We are committed to opening hearts and minds and promoting progressive action around a wide array of social justice issues including racism, sexism, classism, ableism, ageism, and immigration rights. In honor of our first community collaborators, homeless lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ+) youth, and in light of the ongoing need to ensure that they feel included, valued and safe, Fringe Benefits gives special attention to LGBTQ+ issues. We believe that it is imperative for disenfranchised communities to come together, listen to each other’s concerns, stories and ideas, and work together to frame their/our own narratives. Working together, we stand a better chance of being heard and heeded. Our goal is to create a context in which people can turn their damaging experiences with discrimination into art that promote respect, inclusion and justice.
Founded in 1991, Fringe Benefits has a lengthy track record of collaborating with schools and communities, both nationally and internationally, to create groundbreaking social justice-promoting theatre, videos and programs. Our partnerships have produced over 100 world-premiere plays. Additionally, we published 56 original children’s plays, songs and poems in our critically acclaimed Cootie Shots: Theatrical Inoculations Against Bigotry. The anthology of essays about our unique play-devising methodology, Staging Social Justice, is used in university classes throughout the United States. Sir Ian McKellen narrates Surviving Friendly Fire, the award-winning documentary about our work. All of this work, along with Fringe Benefits’ theatre activism workshops and residencies, has earned acknowledgement by the President’s Commission on the Arts and Humanities, and awards from: the CSJ Center for Reconciliation and Justice (2016 and 2018), the Association for Theatre in Higher Education (2009), The Castillo Theatre (2004), Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays, Los Angeles (2003), the Korean Youth and Community Center (2002), and Cornerstone Theater Company (2002).