In 1999, thirteen-year-old Sol Kelley-Jones picked up the phone and called Callen Harty, forty-three. Callen was an established actor and playwright at the Broom Street Theater in Madison, Wisconsin. Although they had heard about each other because they were both advocates for gay rights, they had never met. Sol, the daughter of lesbian parents, was interested in theater, politics, and activism. Sol asked Callen to help her start a theater group for gay and lesbian youth. Callen said yes.

The first year, only three gay teenagers signed on. (Currently there are thirty teen actors.) They had no funding. Churches around town gave them free rehearsal space. A few years into the program, some of the adults involved put up money to rent the main theater on the University of Wisconsin campus. They sold out the show and from that point on were able to pay their own way.

Proud Theater is a nonprofit, all-volunteer organization that is composed of LGBT youth, allies, and children of LGBT parents. Sol describes their work as “a belief in the power of art to create change. The process of creating artwork out of youths’ experiences is radical, is transforming, and is healing. It is also healing to communities. It can have profound ripples.

“We consider ourselves an activist organization, an artistic organization, and also a youth-development organization. We’re developing leaders, stories, and strategies about how to use art to create new realities. Not only do we reflect on some of the horrors and some of the oppression that young people have faced — homophobia, heterosexism, transphobia, and racism — but we also look at the joy and the celebration of different identities. We look at what we want the world to be like. I think theater is a magical place where you can experiment with what isn’t yet.”

Proud Theater is often invited by churches, AIDS networks, senior centers, and schools to perform their plays. The company is expanding. They recently started Proud Theater–Wausau. Wausau is a small, conservative city, yet ten kids show up each week.

Callen says, “Proud Theater has become a lifeline to them. That’s what we’re most proud of.”

To learn more about Proud Theater, visit their website at http://www.proud theater.org.