For 19 years the partnership between the Cleveland Public Theatre, whose Executive Director will be recognized this year at the Ohio Arts Council’s Governor’s Awards for his work and service to the community and Y-Haven, a treatment facility in Cleveland have performed HEAVENLY miracles. Y-Haven is a center for formerly homeless men recovering from addition. Their goal is to help participants maintain sobriety and improve self-sufficiency. This program has demonstrated that it DOES have the power to effect social change as well as reinforce participants’ confidence in themselves. 
The men practice constructive behaviors through the process of creating and performing a play based upon their own experiences. Over the course of four months, the men develop skills in theatre arts while sharing and confronting their own life stories through role-playing and writing exercises. This material is shaped into a play with the help of the Cleveland public Theatre staff, which the men rehearse, produce and perform for audiences of other at-risk populations, students and the general public.
