Theater project to raise sex trafficking awareness

The Georgia Department of Economic Development’s Georgia Council for the Arts recently announced the recipient of a new theater commission, Art as Power: Theatre in Response to Georgia’s Domestic Commercial Sex Exploitation of Minors Crisis.

GCA has partnered with the Georgia Attorney General’s Office, the Georgia Department of Education, Wellspring Living and Street Grace to use theater arts as an educational vehicle for prevention of the sexual exploitation of minors. Georgia-based Out of Hand Theater has been selected to develop the script for late middle school/high school audiences.

This collaborative project is rooted in GCA’s belief in the power of art as an approachable and engaging means to tackle challenging content with audiences of all ages. With funding from the National Endowment for the Arts, the partners have joined forces to offer a $10,000 contract for the creation of a script for a one-act play to raise awareness of domestic commercial sex exploitation of minors.

In 2018, an alarming 91% of victims of domestic sex exploitation in Georgia were still in school while they were being trafficked.

The one-act play will focus on bringing awareness about the coercion and psychological manipulation involved in child exploitation and will delve into the deeper questions of what danger looks like and what safety looks like. Each production of the play will be followed by a Q&A with professionals working in the field that will include information on available resources, both within the school and within the local community.

Information: gaarts.org