Police-Teen Link is a program that links police officers and local teens through theater at the high-school level. The program provides a unique mentoring opportunity with police officers and teens as well as addressing teen-crime issues. Recently it has also incorporated creative writing and interviews to share the experience of their lives with one another. It is our hope that these literary dialogues will be shared with other cops and teens and the Chicago public as a way to resolve the ongoing conflict and stereotyping of these two misunderstood groups. Live Bait was first contacted by the Chicago Police Department Neighborhood Relations Division in fall 1999 to create a play on the theme of teen crime to tour the Chicago Public Schools. I was initially very hesitant about the whole idea: Who were these police officers? Why should I write a play for them? And what do I know about teen crime? We countered with an idea to bring together officers and teens to train the participants to write their own script, using theater games. When we placed a notice in the Chicago Police Department1s Daily Bulletin, more than fifty officers responded. For the past four years, I have been working with the officers and teens, teaching them creative writing. In addition I oversee a team of instructors teaching improv classes in the neighborhoods of Rogers Park, West Town and Englewood. Surprisingly, the original group of officers we recruited in 1999 has stayed relatively intact through 2003 and continues to attend our classes. Over the years, we have begun performing publicly doing a basic improv show with some stylized movement. It was that taste of success that brought about our group's desire to create a script. The core goal of the program is to bring together officers and teens through improv; the process has always seemed more significant to me than producing a show. Until recently, the creation of a script has been a secondary goal. One of our teens explained that part of the appeal of the program is that it creates a place where the officers and the teens are equal. Both risk embarrassment when they perform in front of the class, and each is reliant on the other for the scene to succeed. The classes allow both groups to invent different ways of relating. The officers enjoy the positive interactions with the teens as well as cultivating their own creativity. SHARON EVANS is Artistic Director of Live Bait Theater and Program Director of Police Teen Link. She founded Live Bait Theater in 1987 with her husband John Ragir. She holds a degree from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and has been a writer-resident at the Ragdale Foundation in Lake Forest, Illinois. She has taught at Chicago Dramatists and has guest-lectured at the School of the Art Institute, Loyola University, and Columbia College. Three of her plays have been awarded developmental support from the National Endowment for the Arts. Her plays include Candyland, The Hypochondriac, Portrait of a Shiksa, GIRLS! GIRLS! GIRLS!! LIVE ON STAGE, TOTALLY RUDE!, Freud, Dora and the Wolfman, Starving Artists, The Tall Ships and mostly recently, Blind Tasting. Her play The Tall Ships, which opened at Live Bait in September 1999, was cited first runner-up for the American Theater Critics Association Osborn Award for new work. Her play, Blind Tasting, opened in May 2003 and enjoyed a successful six month run at Live Bait Theater, and was cited in several Best of 2003 lists. She recently adapted US or THEM from writings and improvisations from the Police-Teen Link Ensemble. She is currently working a stage adaptation of the book HEATWAVE by Eric Klinenberg. Evans has overseen the Police-Teen Link program since 1999. In addition she has taught creative writing to police officers and teens, which she then adapted into the script, Us Or Them.