From Program Director, Sharon Evans I was first contacted by the Chicago Police Department’s 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 Department’s Daily Bulletin, more than fifty officers responded. 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. Whenever we have performed publicly, we conduct a talk-back session after each show so the audience had the opportunity to ask questions, get more information and speak honestly of their own hard-held biases. It was that positive experience that encouraged the officers, teens and myself to try and create a more complex script that more accurately captured their lives. Our goal from the very beginning of this program has been to strip away the stereotypic façade of the officers and teens, and for both groups to experience each other as human beings. The intent of our productions will be to extend that experience to the audience members, who no doubt will enter the theater with their own preconceived notions of Chicago police and teens. With our current production of US or THEM, I have taken interviews and The script is a combination of both the oral stories and written material (including poems and monologues). This unique situation reaffirms our interest in cross-experience collaboration. Over the rehearsal process I will be keeping a production diary by observing the group as we create this work.