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SOS Players (Skits Outreach
Services, Inc.) is a non-profit teen acting troupe that has been
traveling throughout the Midwest for over 15 years, helping teen audiences feel
hopeful about the future, empowered to affect its outcome, and informed about
available help resources. SOS performs in churches, schools, at conferences and
conventions, and any other place where teens gather. By presenting serious
topics through drama in relaxed and informative settings, SOS teaches teens how
to make wise life-long choices.
Teen members of SOS Players live the life they teach through theatric
presentations to their peers. Teens who understand the social issues of their
generation form the core of SOS, and they want to influence other teens to make
good choices. Actors with SOS Players walk the walk and talk the talk as they
promote individual responsibility and demonstrate the power teens have to
determine their own futures.
SOS has
proven that peer-to-peer teaching leaves a positive impression – audience
members feel hopeful about the future, empowered to affect its outcome, and
informed about available help resources.
SOS Players presents cutting-edge, powerful drama to teens, from teens. Contact
SOS to bring the troupe to your organization’s next event.
The SOS Players Story
SOS began in 1990 with a troupe of 20 actors. June Erdman was the first
Executive Director and the Founder. The first Artistic Director was Greg Lanier.
He dedicated a lot of time and talent to the organization. In the first year
they performed 33 shows, mostly in Minnesota and Wisconsin.
The founding troupe was determined to start a tradition of integrity, and
created a declaration of responsibility called “the contract.” In later years
that contract was revised and renamed the Code of Ethics, and stands today as
the guiding rule for every member of the troupe. Every teen member signs the
code and promises to abide by it. Its requirements include:
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Remaining drug, alcohol, and tobacco free;
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Maintaining all family and social obligations; and
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Maintaining scholastic standards (as established by SOS).
SOS volunteers and staff work with the teens to support them
in their promise to uphold the code. The peer-based approach – “Walk the
Talk” – is key to SOS Players’ success, and teen members are expected to
take the code seriously.
Today the troupe boasts audiences totaling over one million in 15 years of
service, and an ambitious staff of both paid and volunteer workers (primarily
from the Hudson, WI, area). SOS performs over 150 shows annually throughout
mostly the
Midwest.
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