At APTP, everything begins in a circle. We warm up in a circle, tell stories in a circle, and we dream in a circle. The circle becomes our stage and our sanctuary. There is no front, no back. Every person is seen. Every story is sacred.
I’ve stood in these circles for 27 years now. First as a teenager in the youth ensemble and now as Associate Director and Director of School-Based Programs. Across the years, I’ve watched each generation inherit the work, the struggle, and the possibility.
This year has been rough. Young people in our community carry heartbreak, anxiety, and fear about what’s happening in their city and their country. We are a nation divided. Here in Albany Park, residents have been tear-gassed and intimidated simply for wanting to protect their neighbors.
Still, our young artists have dared to meet our collective broken hearts with hope. They’ve transformed the heartache of a community into art. Into resistance. Into beauty.
This year, I stood in the largest circle we’ve ever formed. APTP@School engaged over 700 students who devised 3 original productions for their school communities. We held our first-ever Culture Fest, celebrating a joy-filled gathering rooted in APTP’s values of play, connection and celebration of diverse cultures. We welcomed 18 new company members into our Youth Ensemble and new designers who began shaping The American Project, a work-in-progress production featuring new stories gathered by our youth from their community.
As part of our work on this new production, we led a writing prompt exercise where images were projected across the room and we asked our ensemble to move closer or farther away from them. When we displayed an American flag, many of our youth backed away to the farthest edges of the room, a reflection of their distant relationship to being American. One young person whose family came from Japan stepped forward. Slowly. Deliberately. He shared that his family and his faith taught him to hold on to the promise of America. He still hopes.
At that moment, his hope disrupted our cynicism, and we were reminded that hope, too, is a form of resistance. Every time we gather in hope, we practice the world we dream of. At APTP, we continue to rehearse towards liberation, tenderness, and transformation. I’m reminded that what we practice at the small scale sets the pattern for the whole world.
At APTP, that pattern begins in a circle — artists and organizers, students, immigrants, and dreamers — shaping something larger than ourselves. This year, Port of Entry has welcomed 1400 audience members. We performed our first-ever Spanish-language production. We’ve hosted 6 educator nights so teachers could see their students perform. We offered three school-day shows for middle schoolers. Congresswoman Delia Ramirez even hosted her staff’s annual retreat at Port of Entry, and after the performance, she took time to field questions from our youth about the state of the world, offering them comfort and inspiring them to confront injustice.
Truly, our circle has never been bigger. Through Port of Entry, The American Project, and APTP@School, more young artists and audiences than ever are finding refuge and power through storytelling. At APTP, resistance happens every day. It happens every time a young artist discovers their voice and a community feels seen. Their work reminds us that art can hold both the wound and the dream. Even when hope feels fragile, even when the world around us wants to make us weak, community keeps us strong.
Building that community at APTP takes a circle of artists, families, organizers, and supporters who refuse to look away. Will you join our circle and help shape not just what’s possible on our stage, but what’s possible in the world?
Your gift keeps young people creating, questioning, and building the future we all deserve.
With hope and thanks,
Maggie Popadiak
Associate Director & Director of School-Based Programs