Vision
Our vision is a community where our youth have access to positive adult role models and programs as an alternative to incarceration and to recognize the “hero” potential that each possesses.
Mission
The Odyssey Artists’ Workshop is a creative writing and theater program for for those most in need of greater arts access in Los Angeles. The program teaches the structural elements of non-fiction writing as well as theater performance skills through the components of Shakespeare and poetry.
Current Partners
William Tell Aggeler Opportunity High School
Homeboy Industries
New Village Charter School
Hoover High School
Teaching Artists
The Antaeus Odyssey Artists’ Workshop was founded by artist and educator Elizabeth Berman, and Antaeus company member John Prosky. Our Teaching Artists are classically-trained actors and playwrights.
Program Directors: Elizabeth Berman, Adrian LaTourelle, and Ann Noble
Elizabeth Berman began her career as a film editor in New York City before relocating to Los Angeles. She was a member of Holly Prado’s writers’ workshop for five years and then went on to earn an MFA in Creative Nonfiction at Antioch University. She founded the non-profit Odyssey Writers’ Workshop, a creative writing program for at-risk teens in three Los Angeles High Schools which eventually merged with Antaeus to create the current program. Elizabeth has served on the boards of the Texas Council for Family Violence, the Harvard Westlake Annual Fund, the UCLA Lab School, UC Berkeley Parent’s Fund, The Gabriella Foundation and The Denan Project. Her work appears in the “Tender Ears” anthology and she is a contributor to the Malibu Times Magazine. Elizabeth is married to television and film producer Rick Berman. They have three children.
Adrian LaTourelle At ANTAEUS: King Lear, The Malcontent, Hedda Gabler, The Seagull. Other Theater: Mark Taper Forum, Shakespeare Theatre Company, The Old Globe, San Jose Repertory Theatre, Dallas Theater Center, Yale Repertory Theatre. TV: NCIS, Castle, The Legend of Korra, Last Resort, The Closer, House M.D., NCIS: Los Angeles, Boston Legal, Without a Trace, Criminal Minds, Numb3rs, Sons of Anarchy. Adrian has also worked abroad, performing in theater and film in Russia and the Netherlands.
Ann Noble is a teacher, and an award-winning, internationally produced playwright/screenwriter and actor. She received a Bachelor of Science from Northwestern University in 1993 majoring in Theatre. In Chicago, in addition to running her own theatre company and continuing to perform and write for many Chicago theatres including the Tony Award-winning Victory Gardens Theater, she began her teaching career at Center Theatre Ensemble. She taught several Master Classes in playwriting there, as well as at her alma mater, Lake Forest High School. She was then hired by Chicago Dramatists, Chicago’s premiere theatre company for new plays, to teach two levels of playwriting. In 2003, her writing and acting career took her to Los Angeles, where she began working in film and television. She continued to work in the theatre, performing at such venues as South Coast Repertory, the Odyssey Theatre, Rogue Machine and the Victory. In 2012, she began work with the Arts Education program, becoming both a teacher and dramaturg for the program and helped to facilitate the merger with the Odyssey Writer’s Workshop.
Our Teaching Artists include:
John Apicella
Elizabeth Berman
Curtis Byrd
Jon Chaffin
David DeSantos
Kaci Hamilton
Adrian LaTourelle
Abigail Marks
Kwana Martinez
Nina Millin
Eternal Mind
Ann Noble
Ramón de Ocampo
R. Ernie Silva
Jasmine St. Clair
Joanna Strapp
Elizabeth Swain
Karen Malina White
