On October 7, 1999, dozens of cars converged on the rooftop of Oakland’s City Center West Garage. In the spotlight of their headlights, small group discussions between 100 police officers and 150 young people confronted urgent issues: crime, authority, power and safety.

Over 100 cars were arranged to create swaths of red, white, and black color across the layered roof. Production teams of young people working over the summer had created video portraits of Oakland neighborhoods that played on thirty monitors perched on the walls over-looking the city. An audience of 1000 community members roamed freely between cars witnessing the spontaneous dialogue of youth and police exploring realities and stereotypes.

Seven floors below, Free Mumia protestors took the street and temporarily interrupted the show, but soon the conversations were in full swing. After an hour of heated discussions among the groups, forty teenage dancers replaced their white t-shirts with red, left their groups, and danced their way through the crowds and down three stories to a massive parking balcony. There, loud music and their frenetic dance performance drew the audience, the police, and the youth into the second and final act of the performance. Overhead a police helicopter circled, its spot light further energizing the street performers.

On this stage, roles were reversed--members of the former audience were now performers. Groups of people from eight different Oakland neighborhoods sat on grass-covered platforms with white picket fences—mini-stages where residents discussed what they had heard earlier and the former “performers” listened. The community became protagonist, implicated on stage as in real life, a player in the sometimes deadly and always confrontational relationship between police and youth. Click here for sponsorship information.