LAPD's crusade is not amiss in a city renowned as the home of some of the country's most famous faces and lavish lifestyles, but also as the location of the nation's densest concentration of homeless. Some 5,000 people live on Skid Row - a 50-square-block downtown neighborhood that long ago surrendered to crime and vagrancy - 1,800 of them on the street, the rest in shelters.
The city's pervasive homelessness is increasingly inspiring groups like LAPD, which see the arts as a way to highlight public awareness of a social problem and as a pick-me-up tool for those living hand-to-mouth.
"Homeless people often don't think they can do anything. These programs change one's own perception of what's possible," said Laura Zucker, executive director of the Los Angeles County Commission on the Arts. "We know they help improve people's self-esteem."
Kevin Michael Key is living proof of that effect.
After spending 40 years addicted to heroin and crack cocaine, he found LAPD on Skid Row and has since toured the country and performed in Paris with Malpede. Earlier this year, he landed a small speaking role in the movie "The Soloist," which recounts Los Angeles Times columnist Steve Lopez's friendship with a homeless musician. The movie was partially filmed on Skid Row using locals as nonunion extras.
"It has helped bring to me a new perspective and perception," the 58-year-old Key said. "I used my experience as a basis for expertise. John has encouraged and nurtured that."
Almost 20 arts nonprofits in and around Los Angeles now incorporate homeless people in projects ranging from plays to painting to cinema, but LAPD was a forerunner of the homeless arts initiatives and is the only group that aims to mix art and advocacy.
Some of the works performed by Malpede's 20-member troupe, most of whom are homeless or formerly homeless, seem esoteric, but they attract attention - and that's the point.
In the play "La Llorona" ("The Weeping Woman"), Mexican immigrant women recounted and sung in Spanish their own experiences as battered wives, exploited nannies, and mothers who lost their sons to violence or prison.
