About
Our Mission
The mission of Resilience Productions is to educate, enlighten and engage the public regarding the many unknown and un-celebrated contributions of African Americans to Indiana’s—and ultimately to our country’s—history.
Our Story
RESILIENCE PRODUCTIONS is conceived and created by Danielle Bruce, Gladys DeVane, and Elizabeth Mitchell, three women who believe in the power of storytelling. As an ensemble, they research, write, and produce live performances inspired by actual historical events in the form of plays, poetry and staged readings. These productions are intended to cultivate an awareness as much as to entertain. By depicting the African American experience from hardships and struggles to triumphs and successes, we are recognizing these bold and deserving men and women, ensuring their legacy will not be forgotten.
What We Do
Danielle is the official director for Resilience Productions. However, Danielle’s contribution to the Resilience team begins as dramaturge, by pairing up with Gladys and Elizabeth the three come together to cut and paste the story, sometimes having up to ten drafts…before the story is deemed stage-worthy. Once the process is complete, Danielle shifts into the role of designer, creating the graphics to market the show; as well as designing the set to determine “the look” of the show. Finally, once all the preliminary tasks are handled, Danielle moves into the role of director, where her role as director is to bring these stories to life in ways that educate, inspire, and engage audiences
Gladys is the storyteller/writer for Resilience Productions. As the storyteller, her primary responsibility is that of weaving actual historical events—with the imagined—into a coherent story that conveys the hardships, struggles, and successes encountered by a proud people. Many of the stories are rooted in African American culture and history. While others are born of life’s experiences imagined through historical accounts. Gladys’s primary objective is to create a story that can be brought to life on stage in a compelling way once the story is handed off to the production director, Danielle.
Elizabeth is the historical researcher for Resilience Productions. Her role on the team is that of researching, uncovering, and reclaiming lost and forgotten African American history. She finds and validates information by—rummaging through musty boxes of archaic government records, combing through archives and old newspapers, and interviewing relatives, acquaintances, and sometimes the subject of our stories. Elizabeth gathers the miscellaneous, seemingly random bit and pieces of information from various sources and passes this information to the writer—Gladys—who uses it as the foundation on which to build a story. Elizabeth specializes in Jim Crow artifacts and she has spent the last forty years acquiring one of the most comprehensive private collections in the country.