04/30/2026
🗽We hope you can join Fringe Benefits Theatre for ““Theatrical Activism & the First Amendment: Freedom of Speech & Assembly in Creative Protest,” a FREE Online Master Class with 2 award-winning presenters: Artist, Activist & Scholar L.M. Bogad & ACLU SoCal Lawyer Peter Eliasberg! 🗽JOIN US online Saturday, June 6, 1pm to 4pm (Pacific)! 💥This is a once in a lifetime opportunity!💥
⭐Applications are due Saturday, May 30.⭐
👉🏾👉🏽👉🏿APPLY HERE : https://forms.gle/sVERGVrkweLZjFFN9
💜OVERVIEW: In this Master Class, Bogad and Eliasberg will share and discuss examples of theatrical and artistic nonviolent activism. Bogad will explore the history, ethics, aesthetics, and practical concerns of these actions as key examples of social movement campaigns for social justice and democracy. Eliasberg will outline crucial First Amendment rights and protections to consider when preparing and performing these kinds of campaigns. The powerful sociodramas created by the American Civil Rights Movement and the American Indian Movement and ACT-UP, and more playful examples by recent groups, create a framework for the talk. We will discuss how theatrical techniques can inform or enhance the impact of public demonstrations, and the importance of serious play, surprise and irresistible images. Bogad draws on decades of experience as an artist-activist, having worked with most of the more contemporary groups he discusses as a writer, performer and strategist. Eliasberg draws on his experience as Chief Counsel at the ACLU, defending the free speech rights of student protesters against both administration actions and violence from outside groups.
💙PRESENTERS:
L.M. Bogad is an author, performer, and professor of Cinema and Digital Media and Performance Studies at U.C. Davis. Recent awards include the Guggenheim Fellowship, a Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Residency, and major grants from the Creative Work Fund and the California Arts Council. He has published three books of stage plays and essays on how creative, theatrical activism can support human and civil rights campaigns and resist authoritarian propaganda: Electoral Guerrilla Theatre: Radical Ridicule and Social Movements, Tactical Performance: The Theory and Practice of Serious Play, and Performing Truth: Works of Radical Memory for Times of Social Amnesia. In 2025, Tactical Performance was translated to Farsi and published in Iran by “Woman, Life, Freedom” activists. He has performed and led workshops in twenty countries on five continents, from Chile to Finland to Egypt.
Bogad was the “Art and Controversy” Fellow at Carnegie Mellon, the “Humanities and Political Conflict” Fellow at Arizona State, the “Arts and Publics” Fellow at Northwestern, and a Charlotte Newcombe Fellow at the Institute for Citizens and Scholars. He has recently worked with North Bay Jobs With Justice on a farmworkers' social and ecological justice campaign, founded Delivering Democracy, a troupe of singing and dancing mailboxes combating voter suppression and disinformation, and hosts the podcast The Plague. He is a veteran of the Lincoln Center Director’s Laboratory and a cofounder of the Clown Army.
Peter Eliasberg joined the ACLU in 1996 and served as the managing attorney and the Manheim Family attorney for First Amendment Rights until February 2011, when he became legal director for the affiliate. Since 2016, he has served as Chief Counsel and Director of the affiliate’s First Amendment and Democracy Project. During his tenure Peter has worked on cases involving the First Amendment, the Fourth Amendment, disability discrimination and educational equity, among others. He represented Frank Buono in federal district court, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and the United States Supreme Court in an Establishment Clause challenge to the presence of a cross on federal land in Buono v. Salazar. Peter represented a class of bus riders with disabilities who sued the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transit Authority over the agency’s failure to provide accessible buses in Beauchamp v. Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transit Authority. In Williams v. State of California, he represented a class of school children challenging the State of California's failure to provide basic education necessities ― including clean and safe school facilities, adequate textbooks, and trained teachers.
Peter graduated from Harvard Law School magna cm laude and clerked for both Judge Stanley Sporkin of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia and Judge Stephen Reinhardt of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Peter Eliasberg, as Chief Counsel at the ACLU Foundation of Southern California, has been heavily involved in legal actions and advocacy surrounding the 2024 pro-Palestinian protests and encampments at UCLA and in a First Amendment case against the Department of Homeland Security for its mistreatment of journalists, protesters, and legal observers during protests against immigration actions in the Southern California area.
💚 This is going to be a LIVELY workshop designed for theatre artists and activists looking to add more tools to their social justice toolkits, including artistic strategies, safety considerations, and more!
👉🏾👉🏿👉🏽And again… APPLY BY May 30 - https://forms.gle/sVERGVrkweLZjFFN9
We look forward to hearing from you!
Norma Bowles, Artistic Director
Fringe Benefits Theatre
and
Amy Sarno, Josie K. Vano & Peyton Matik
Co-Producers, Can We Be Reel? and Constitutional Crash Out!
Two new Fringe Benefits arts activism initiatives
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Follow us on Instagram ( , and .We.Be.Reel) to receive updates and engage with theatre & video artivists!
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🙏🏽❤️🙏🏽THANK YOU FOR YOUR GENEROUS SUPPORT!!! 🙏🏽❤️🙏🏽
The Carol and James Collins Foundation, The Dwight Stuart Youth Fund, Liberty Hill Foundation / Kicking Assets, Los Angeles County, Department of Arts and Culture, the Strickland Family Foundation, and all of Fringe Benefits Theatre’s individual donors!
