Sofa Stories is a community arts project using live theatre and digital media to amplify the stories of young Detroiters who have experienced homelessness or housing insecurity and have resorted to couch-surfing as a means to survive.
Since late 2019 the Sofa Stories team worked with young people at the Detroit Phoenix Center to create a series of short monologues that all explore homelessness/housing issues in some capacity.
Physically distanced, in-person performances took place in Detroit in August & September 2021 in outdoor locations across the city. At each performance, a selection of monologues was performed by actors sitting on sofas to one audience member (or pair) at a time. At the end of each performance, audiences heard from young people from the Detroit Phoenix Center to learn more about what they can do to help end youth homelessness.
The first phase of Sofa Stories was made possible with funding from the 2019 Knight Arts Challenge Detroit, an initiative by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation to support local art that connects people to place and each other, and additional support from Floyd and Trip Wipes.
Short films of select monologues will be available to watch online in 2022, and more in-person productions are planned for summer 2022 and early 2023.