Add Verb Productions Arts and Education is dedicated to promoting awareness and dialogue as a means of social change, focusing primarily on activism with and for youth.

AVP holds attention in Maine and around the nation with such programs as The Thin Line and You the Man. These one-person shows, developed by AVP's founder Cathy Plourde, are performed by professional actors, and are a means of facilitating a community coordinated response to the issues of eating disorders and relationship violence and sexual assault.

Just recently launched: AVP's new violence prevention Youth Action Kit & peer education play, Make it Stop! The project was developed with the help of a grant from the Department of Justice's Project Safe Neighborhoods. In the spring of 2006 the Maine State Project Safe Neighborhoods Task Force distributed these kits to every high school across the state of Maine. Make it Stop! is available for purchase beginning summer 2006.

Through our Playwriting as Activism program, AVP also presents youth workshops and residencies to promote and train using arts as a social change medium. Through these residencies youth are able to create original performances addressing social issues; to experience community building and leadership development as they work together to take risks and explore new passions; and to share their stories and talents with their communities.

Additionally, AVP has two other scripts by Plourde available for local productions: Butt of Course (youth and tobacco) and Money Talks (women/girls and money). Plourde's scripts are thoroughly researched and both the subjects and the audiences are treated with respect while exploring the multiplicity of truth with humor and creativity.

Audiences and participants of AVP's programming will be able to walk away with a deeper understanding and with new language to begin talking of the topic at hand. As Add Verb Productions Arts & Education continues to grow, the work of other artists can find a home.