STRINDBERG LABORATORY

The Strindberg Laboratory creates community-based theater with persons from diverse backgrounds. Established in 2011,The Strindberg Laboratory., (TSL) is an independent non-profit Theater Company that provides professional theater workshops and plays for disadvantaged populations both inside correctional facilities and in surrounding under served communities. Artistic Director Meri Pakarinen and President Michael Bierman are bringing hope to segments of society significantly affected by the ever widening economic gap between the upper and lower classes. TSL's main mission is to restore positive self image and confidence to those people who have lost their path in life by offering theater workshops as a trans-formative and therapeutic tool to build personal coping mechanisms for financial, physical, and emotional challenges. TSL's workshops transform lives through the dramatic arts. Studies show that theater inside corrections and outside corrections build self confidences, increase motivation and relieve stress. (Brewster L. Justice Policy Journal 2014) The Strindberg Laboratory (STL) is unique in the fact that, this is one of the only theater company that works within the Los Angeles Prison system, local jails and skid row community rehabilitation facilities and Los Angeles prisons . Our ongoing presence in all of these different institutions allows TSL to significantly effect lasting, positive behavioral change. Also through TSL's reentry bridge program "Break it to Make it" that includes partners like Los Angeles Community College and Los Angeles Mission and TSL's Jails to Jobs program, TSL aims to provide programming that helps its students upon release not return to correctional facilities.