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BACIC, the Bay Area Center for Independent Culture, was founded in 1997 to bring independent, multicultural, developmental theater to the San Francisco Bay Area and produces the nationally acclaimed All Stars Talent Show Network, a devolpmental youth program. BACIC is dedicated to human development, community building, and performance. BACIC brings people together from diverse backgrounds - racial, economic, and sexual - to create new cultural experiences. Creating new culture with people of different backgrounds has taken many forms: theatrical productions, play readings, performance workshops, and street and phone fundraising performances and youth programs. These activities provide people from all walks of life with opportunities to work together to stretch themselves beyond what they thought possible.
BACIC helps people young and old go beyond themselves, do what they don't know how to do, and grow and develop as individuals and as leaders in their communities. This transformation process characterizes our developmental approach to theater and distinguishes it from other forms of theatrical endeavor where the end result - a staged production - is the sole objective.

BACIC's youth program, the nationally acclaimed All Stars Talent Show Network to the Bay Area. After having successfully produced three auditions, workshops, and talent shows in Oakland in the last year and a half, there has been a surge of support from the community to help the program grow on several fronts. The next audition and show will be in August and September of 2003.

The New York-based All Stars Talent Show Network is one of the nation's leading youth anti-violence programs (www.allstars.org). Now in its 20th year, the All Stars focuses on performance as an alternative to violence and destructive behavior and as a powerful vehicle for emotional, personal and social growth. And we have fun

Each year, more than 20,000 inner city youth from neighborhoods throughout New York City and in Newark, New Jersey, Philadelphia, Pennslyvania and the Bay Area take part in All Stars events such as auditions, rehearsals, talent shows, and development workshops. While enjoying the fun of performing and producing, the All Stars youth have the opportunity to experience the transformational power of performance in every day life. The All Stars, the recipient of several awards for its performance-based approach to youth development, was featured in the recent PBS documentary, "The Promise of Play."