Pin Points

A month after the second consecutive murder of an Anacostia High School student , the performers in Pin Points Theatre bused Anacostia High School students to Ketcham Elementary School for an exercise in community service. Thanks to a kind grant from the Corporation for National & Community Service , Pin Points Theatre was awarded the task of teach... ing a group of hard-edged teenagers the value of community service. To help them understand the dual benefits of service, each high schooler was assigned a book to read to a designated class at Ketcham. The transition was amazing. The blank, sometimes disinterested, teenager expressions changed to smiles and giggles as they read, played and talked with the children. We then gave the teenagers a well-deserved reward by feeding them at a restaurant where the concepts of service were further discussed and the dining thoroughly enjoyed. The above event is an example of the many changes Pin Points has experienced since its beginnings as a writers' workshop called "Pen Points" in 1978. It was then a training ground for a plethora of writers who became quite successful: Joy Jones, ("Teacher Meditations" and president of Spoken Word), Jonetta Barras ("Daddy's Little Girl," columnist for the Washington Post and popular talk show host), Ersky Freeman ("Why Doctors Don't Guarantee Their Work" along with numerous nationally touring plays) - to name a few. Pen Points writers' workshop evolved into Pin Points Theatre in 1980. It can be best described as a community theater company that travels internationally; creating its plays and workshops in impoverished D.C. communities then presenting them to schools, businesses, government agencies and theaters throughout D.C., the United States, and so far, in Asia (Guam, Korea, Japan, and Singapore), Canada, and Germany. Productions include: 1,001 Black Inventions featuring the vast intellectual accomplishments of African Americans and then traveling into "The Twilight Zone," a world where all inventions by Africans and African Americans ...Read More