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What is the High School Matinee Program?

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What is the High School Matinee Program?

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Young Playwrights’ Theater inspires young people to realize the power of their own voices. YPT provides inspiration, tools, and opportunities for young and emerging artists to develop and share their stories. We prioritize young people who are targeted by systems of oppression, and we also collaborate with people of all ages who are invested in how theater can transform lives and communities.

The Playwright-Performer, Ty’Ree Hope Davis, participated in YPT’s Young Playwrights in Progress script development program, where he further developed his play, Riot: The Beat of Freddie Gray. In September 2024, YPT hosted a dinner-theatre style performance of this play at Busboys & Poets in Washington, DC. You can view that performance here.

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We share our students’ brilliance with the world.

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Riot: The Beat of Freddie Gray follows the story of Freddie Gray, a young Black man murdered by Baltimore police officers in 2015, and Ty, a middle school student who witnessed Freddie’s death. Freddie, unaware that he is dead, attempts to write a hit song, but struggles to recall a specific beat he knows is crucial. This leads Freddie and Ty to delve into the past, piecing together memories and flashbacks leading to Freddie’s wrongful arrest, the brutality he endured, and the injustice that ultimately led to his death. The play explores themes of memory, resilience, and the fight for justice, culminating in a powerful realization that Freddie’s heartbeat lives on in the collective spirit of those who continue to fight for change.

Each part of this play is titled a "Seen" rather than "Scene" because what you will see is not just performance, it is truth. This play is as much about the past as it is about what’s still happening today.

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Only one actor, Ty’Ree Hope Davis, will perform each character in the play. Each character shift is initiated through a [TRANSBREATH], an exaggerated inhale, a bodily shiver, and/or a change in stance and energy. Each character will be performed with distinct physicality, tone, and rhythm to help the audience understand who is speaking.

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What Is a Solo Show in Theater? - Broadway Behind The Curtain

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Hip-Hop Theatre: Recognition Without Permission

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Hip-Hop Theatre: Recognition Without Permission

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Hip-Hop Theatre: Recognition Without Permission | Jonzi D | TEDxWarwick

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This performance has three simple rules:

1. Engage. Our energy, our listening, and even our silence shape this story. Feel free to hum, sing, laugh, cry, clap, snap, and stomp if the beat compels you, but always remain mindful of the collective experience of the audience members around you.

2. Witness. The boundary between stage and audience is erased. What you will see is also what you live. These events are not imagined; they are alive. This is a shared journey; allow it to pass through you.

3. Breathe. An inhale in... and an exhale out. Breath is but a perpetual fight for life. Breathe to live... breathe to tell the story... and breathe to be the beat.

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The setting of RIOT: The Beat of Freddie Gray is West Baltimore, Maryland.

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TY: Black; youngin’; curious, vulnerable, and wise beyond his years.

FREDDIE GRAY: Black; 25 years old; charismatic, revolutionary, and explosive.

COP/FOOTBALL PLAYA: White; oppressive, intimidatin’, and predatory.

HOOD NAIL TECH/OG/12 O'CLOCK BOY: Black; varied ages and experiences; Griots.

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This article was most recently revised and updated by

Baltimore, city, north-central Maryland, U.S., about 40 miles (65 km) northeast of Washington, D.C. It lies at the head of the Patapsco River estuary, 15 miles (25 km) above Chesapeake Bay. Baltimore is Maryland's largest city and economic centre and constitutes the northeastern hub of the Baltimore-Washington metropolitan area. The city, separated from Baltimore county in 1851, is the only city in Maryland not located within a county. Inc. town, 1729; city, 1796. Area city, 92 square miles (238 square km). Pop. (2000) 651,154; Baltimore-Towson Metro Area, 2,552,994; (2010) 620,961; Baltimore-Towson Metro Area, 2,710,489.

Baltimore Area Convention & Visitors Association; photo, Middleton Evans

History

Baltimore was established in 1729 and named for the Irish barony of Baltimore (seat of the Calvert family, proprietors of the colony of Maryland). It was created as a port for shipping tobacco and grain, and soon local waterways were being harnessed for flour milling. At the outbreak of the American Revolution, it was a bustling seaport and shipbuilding centre. Baltimore clippers plied the seas, and trade extended to the Caribbean. The U.S. Navy's first ship, the Constellation, was launched in Baltimore in 1797, and its namesake, the last all-sail warship built (1854) for the navy, has been moored in the city's harbour since 1955; in the late 1990s the ship underwent extensive restoration. The Continental Congress met in Baltimore (December 1776-March 1777) when it was feared that the British would attack Philadelphia, then the national capital.

During the War of 1812 the British tried to capture Baltimore; U.S. forces' successful defense (September 13-14, 1814) of nearby Fort McHenry (now a national monument and historic shrine) was the inspiration for Francis Scott Key's poem "The Star-Spangled Banner." The eastern terminus for the nation's first railroad, the Baltimore and Ohio (1827), was the city's Mount Clare Station; the station has been preserved and is now the site of a railroad museum. During the American Civil War (1861-65), though Maryland did not secede from the Union, many of its citizens had Southern sympathies. Union troops occupied Baltimore throughout the war, and the city recovered only gradually from that period of severe disruption.

A fire on February 7, 1904, razed most of the business district, but recovery was rapid. At the beginning of World War I, Baltimore began to develop industrially with the construction of steelworks, oil refineries, and related war industries. In the 1920s and early '30s Baltimore acquired an intellectual aura from the work of essayist and editor H.L. Mencken and his circle, including journalists on the Sun newspaper. A period of urban decay in the city centre after World War II was followed by a major renovation of the downtown and waterfront areas.

Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

The contemporary city

Baltimore is now a major seaport with ship-repair facilities and a highly diversified economy. The port opens to the sea through Chesapeake Bay and the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal and is a major automobile-shipping point. Services, including health care, education, finance, and insurance, are a major component of the economy. The headquarters of the Federal Social Security Administration is in the city, and other federal government services and the military are also important. Manufactures include automobiles, electronics, steel, processed foods, paper and plastic products, and aircraft parts.

The city is part of the busy Northeast Corridor passenger rail system. Baltimore/Washington International Airport, just south of the city, also serves Washington, D.C. The Baltimore Harbor (1957) and Fort McHenry (1985) tunnels and Francis Scott Key Bridge (1977) cross the Patapsco River. There is a dense network of interstate highways and other roads between Baltimore and Washington.

Baltimore and the surrounding area is a centre of higher education. Located there are the renowned Johns Hopkins University (1876), which includes the Peabody Institute Conservatory of Music (1857; affiliated with Johns Hopkins since 1977); Coppin State University (1900), Towson University (1866), the University of Maryland, Baltimore (1807), and the University of Baltimore (1925), all part of the University of Maryland system; Loyola University Maryland (1852); the Notre Dame of Maryland University (1873); Morgan State University (1867); the Maryland Institute College of Art (1826); Goucher College (1885); and Baltimore City Community College (1947).

Among the city's other cultural institutions are the Enoch Pratt Free Library (1882), the Baltimore Museum of Art (1914), the Walters Art Museum (1934; formerly called Walters Art Gallery), a symphony orchestra, and opera and theatre companies. The Baltimore Civil War Museum (1997) has exhibits on the city's role in the Underground Railroad. The Inner Harbor area, revitalized in the 1980s, includes the National Aquarium in Baltimore and other attractions.

In 1789 Baltimore became the first Roman Catholic diocese in the United States, and the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary (1806-21) was the nation's first Roman Catholic cathedral; St. Mary's Seminary and University was founded in 1791. The Shot Tower (1828) is a 234-foot (71-metre) shaft once used to manufacture round shot. The Washington Monument (1829), a 178-foot (54-metre) Doric column, was designed by architect Robert Mills, who later designed the Washington Monument in Washington, D.C. Hampton National Historic Site, Aberdeen Proving Ground, and Pimlico Race Course (home of the Preakness Stakes) are nearby, as are several state parks, including Gunpowder Falls (northeast), Hart-Miller Island (east), North Point (southeast), and Patapsco Valley (west).

The city's representatives in professional sports are the Orioles ( baseball) and the Ravens (American football). The celebrated Oriole Park at Camden Yards (1992), just west of the Inner Harbor, was the first of the retro-style ballparks designed to look like those built in the early 20th century. Near the stadium is the birthplace of baseball player Babe Ruth, preserved as a shrine and museum, as well as the grave of another Baltimore native, writer Edgar Allan Poe. The Lacrosse Museum and National Hall of Fame at Johns Hopkins University attests to the popularity of the old Native American game in Baltimore.
The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Adam Augustyn, Managing Editor, Reference Content.

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...Latrobe's Roman Catholic Cathedral at Baltimore (1805-18). Drawing on the Pantheon and on Soufflot's Sainte-Geneviève, the cathedral contains a dome resting on segmental arches perhaps inspired by Soane's interiors at the Bank of England. Latrobe's most poetic and inventive work is a series of interiors at the United States Capitol...

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Baltimore | History, Population, & Facts

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Baltimore, largest city in Maryland and the state's economic center. Lying about 40 miles (65 km) northeast of Washington, D.C., it constitutes the northeastern hub of the Baltimore-Washington metropolitan area. It was established in 1729 as a port for shipping tobacco and grain.

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Baltimore, Maryland, hosts many of the oldest and notable public housing projects in the United States. Baltimore “projects” are primarily occupied by Black people. Historically, projects have been plagued by drug trafficking, poverty, and gang violence. The Gilmor Homes, located in the Winchester area of West Baltimore, are among the most dangerous, with crime rates above the national averages. Historically Black neighborhoods in Baltimore have been under-resourced, heavily policed, impoverished, and underinvested in. Both the local and federal governments have abandoned Baltimore’s Black neighborhoods.

The projects referenced in RIOT: The Beat of Freddie Gray are Penn North, Presbury Street, and Gilmor Homes.

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The 1968 Baltimore Riots were an immediate response to the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., on April 4, 1968. Over 100 cities within the United States rose in protest, including Baltimore. From April 6-14, 1968, many residents flooded the streets protesting, looting, burning, and confronting the police and the National Guard.

After the 1968 Baltimore riots, the city experienced “white flight.” Many white Baltimore residents fled the city. Baltimore went from being a mostly white-populated city to a mostly Black-populated city. Baltimore City saw a decline in revenue, neighborhood upkeep, and prosperity. With the rise of the Black population, Baltimore City experienced worsening housing conditions, rising crime rates, fewer jobs, and more unsafe working conditions.

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The 1968 Riots Through a Baltimore Photographer's Lens

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The 1968 Riots Through a Baltimore Photographer's Lens

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1968 riots through a Baltimore photographer's lens

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Editor's note: This story contains language some may find offensive.
After the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s murder in Memphis 50 years ago this week, protests and civil unrest erupted in some 125 cities across the nation. Baltimore though was eerily calm in the first two days following the civil rights leader's assassination, before mournful tranquility gave way to anger and resentment.

For more than a week, hundreds of homes and businesses were torched and more than 5,000 National Guard troops were deployed to restore order.

Six people died in the unrest.

Baltimore's riots in 1968 were not simply about King's death. The unrest laid bare problems linked to the city's long history segregation and economic disparities, which resurfaced during the city's latest civil unrest three years ago.

Lots of comparisons have made between the 1968 riots and those in 2015.

Both took place after days of peaceful protests following the death of a black man.

In 1968 it was King. In 2015 it was 25-year-old Freddie Gray, who died after suffering a severe spinal injury while in police custody. In both instances hundreds were arrested and the National Guard was sent in to tamp down the violence.

In April 1968, Tommy D'Alesandro III - known to many then as "Young Tommy" was just a few months into his term as mayor when he tried to assure Baltimore residents that authorities had the rioting in hand.

"I want to appeal to all the people of the city of Baltimore to remain calm, to be peaceful, that the National Guard, the State Trooper and the police department have the situation well under control," D'Alesandro said during a press conference.

Robert Birt remembers this period vividly.

"It was warm. There of course was tension in the city," Birt says as he stands in the courtyard of the Latrobe Homes housing projects in East Baltimore, his old neighborhood.

He was 15 at the time. And though he says this section of town was considered the ghetto, the neighborhood did not look as it does now, with many units boarded up. Behind him the words "No Shoot Zone" are spray painted on a wall.

Fifty years ago, Birt says he remembers a mob of 15 or 20 people making their way towards a corner shop. Like him they were young and black. The crowd was making their way towards a corner shop owned by an older white couple.

"When they got in front, that's when I heard some people shouting 'they killed King,'" Birt recalls someone in the crowd shouting. "'These white crackers they killed King, these white so-and-so's killed King, they going to pay for it, we're going to burn 'em out."

Birt, who now teaches philosophy at Bowie State University, says someone tossed a Molotov cocktail and that corner store burst into flames.

This scene was repeated throughout the city as numerous grocery stores, dry cleaners and appliance shops were destroyed - most owned by white folks no longer living in the majority black neighborhoods where their businesses were located.

Robert Embry was a 30-year-old city council member when the riots broke out. He represented Northeast Baltimore, which was predominantly white at the time.

"A number of people I knew had guns that they got out of the closet and had ready in white neighborhoods," he says, "because they feared the African-American community would come into their neighborhood and do some kind of violence."

Embry is now president of the Baltimore-based Abell Foundation, which helps fight poverty.

"The city, then as now, was racially divided," Embry says.

Wanda Draper is the executive director of the Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African-American History & Culture.

"You still see there are definitely predominately black neighborhoods, there are white neighborhoods. There are black schools and there are white schools. Integration has kind of come and gone," Draper says, about today's Baltimore.

She was in high school during the 1968 riots and lived in a well-off northwest Baltimore neighborhood where she grew up during the height of white flight. She says Baltimore's economic segregation remains a serious problem.

"You don't have a lot of poor neighborhoods that are integrated," Draper says.

Elizabeth Nix is a professor at the University of Baltimore who directed an oral history project a decade ago centered on Baltimore's civil unrest. Part of that project was turned into a book, Baltimore '68: Riots and Rebirth in an American City.

She says decades of systemic discrimination laid the groundwork for the 1968 and 2015 riots. Things like city-instituted segregation and then redlining that prevented many black people from getting home loans to move or repair their existing houses.

"There are these scars through certain neighborhoods and people feel like their neighborhoods have been abandoned. Abandoned by the federal government, abandoned by the local government, abandoned by wealthier neighbors who have moved out," Nix says. "So you can see, just in the residential sector, there's a lot of frustration."

Nix says King was scheduled to visit Baltimore a week before he was killed. At the time he was expanding his fight against segregation to address economic disparities - for all races.

Commemorations of Martin Luther King's passing will continue in Baltimore through April. Next week young activists are sitting down with veterans of the civil rights movement to talk about how to fulfill King's dream.

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50 Years Ago Baltimore Burned. The Same Issues Set It Aflame In 2015

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Editor's note: This story contains language some may find offensive. After the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s murder in Memphis 50 years ago this week, protests and civil unrest erupted in some 125 cities across the nation. Baltimore though was eerily calm in the first two days following the civil rights leader's assassination, before mournful tranquility gave way to anger and resentment.

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Celebrating Baltimore’s Civil Rights Legacy with Evita Robinson

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Celebrating Baltimore’s Civil Rights Legacy with Evita Robinson

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Celebrating Baltimore’s Civil Rights Legacy with Evita Robinson

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How Freddie Gray's Death Changed Baltimore

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How Freddie Gray's Death Changed Baltimore

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The death that shook Baltimore: How Freddie Gray changed Baltimore City and the nation

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Timeline of Freddie Gray’s Death and the Protests That Followed

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Timeline of Freddie Gray’s Death and the Protests That Followed

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Freddie Gray: From Baltimore arrest to protests, a timeline of the case

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Explore a detailed timeline of what happened in the arrest and death of Freddie Gray and the protests that came in the aftermath.

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The Aftermath of Freddie Gray’s Death in Photos

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The Aftermath of Freddie Gray’s Death in Photos

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An American hip-hop group formed in Roosevelt, New York, in 1985 by Chuck D and Flavor Flav. The group rose to prominence for their political messages, including subjects such as American racism and the American media.

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Public Enemy - Fight The Power (Official Music Video)

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The 1998 debut solo album of Lauryn Hill. Combining hip-hop and R&B music, the album served as a cultural touchstone for Black reflection, identity, maturity, schooling, and systemic critique.

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Blue Monday (painting by Annie Lee, 1985)

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Blue Monday (painting by Annie Lee, 1985)

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Visual art that taps into emotional color, Black interior life, struggle, and everyday scenes with dignity.

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Cultural archetypes/tropes around Black identity, commodification, and stereotypes. In the play, they offer a contrast between who Freddie Gray is vs. how society tries to brand or erase him.

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Extension Project #1: Write a Poem/Rap About Your Name

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Extension Project #1: Write a Poem/Rap About Your Name

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Extension Project #2: Write a Letter to Your Hometown

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Extension Project #2: Write a Letter to Your Hometown

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Extension Project #4: Remember, Feel, Offer

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Extension Project #4: Remember, Feel, Offer

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Street Artist Creates Mural To Honor Freddie Gray

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Street Artist Creates Mural To Honor Freddie Gray - Baltimore Magazine

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Work sits close to where police took Gray into custody.