About the Center

Everyone has a gift.
Not everyone gets the chance to use it.

Since 1968, in an area distinguished primarily for its chronic poverty and violence, young artists at the East Bay Center for the Performing Arts have been discovering how training in the arts can and does illuminate their fullest capacity as human beings.

Over the past forty years, more than fifty thousand student artists from all walks of life have shared a home in the neighborhood known as the Iron Triangle, where they have found within themselves the means to develop skills that enable them to think, lead, and contribute to the world they see around them.

The East Bay Center for the Performing Arts is a surprising place of discovery. Through the breadth, depth, and passion of experiencing classical master works and cutting-edge forms from around the world, our student artists come to know the world’s great performance traditions, the beauty of one’s neighbor, a calling in life, and the life of the mind. They come to experience the spark of young imagination.

Through the active creation of original music, film, theater, and dance, and self-determined community projects, we emphasize the cause of social justice, the hard work needed to prepare, the skills to create, and the courage to perform. In the next two years we are rebuilding our home. Over the next fifty years, we plan to reach seventy-five thousand more youth to carry on this work of discovery. We invite you to join us in any way you can.

To learn more, please write or call:

Jordan Simmons
Artistic Director
jordan@eastbaycenter.org
(510) 234-5624 ext 16