Category: Art & Entertainment

This year, the Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival brought together KidSafe Foundation, a local South Florida organization dedicated to educating and empowering children to make them harder targets for trafficking and sexual abuse, and “The New Abolitionists,” a documentary that follows four nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in Thailand and Cambodia fighting to end human sex trafficking. Together, this partnership is raising awareness about the growing problem of human trafficking in this country and abroad.

It was a crisp November evening when I sat down at the Savor Cinema in downtown Fort Lauderdale for a screening of “The New Abolitionists.” Originally built as a church in 1926, its theater still feels like a place of prayer, and that’s exactly what this harrowing film made me want to do, pray.

The film begins in Cambodia, where troves of girls are stationed at karaoke bars looking to pick up men. Many of these young women were victims of trafficking, some sold or deceived by their own families, and are now on their own and lack the education, skills, and self-worth to get out of the sex industry.

“A lot of people want to think human sex trafficking is prostitution. It’s not. Human trafficking is, by definition, when somebody has been forced, coerced, or frauded into these sexual acts,” explains Christina Zorich, director of the film.

In Thailand, a hotbed for sex tourism, the film estimates that there are 35,000 prostitutes in the city of Pattaya alone, where it is not uncommon to see adult men taking children on dates in public. As disturbing as it was to watch, it helps to demonstrate both the pervasiveness of the problem and, even worse, the complicitness of the government, which is why Zorich had to geoblock the film to prevent it from being seen in Southeast Asia.

“It’s pretty well agreed on in the anti-trafficking community that Asia is probably the most trafficked region of the globe,” says Zorich.

Just as jarring as the film itself were the number of empty seats in the theater, especially given that, according to data from the National Human Trafficking Hotline, Florida is one of the top three states in the country with the most human trafficking. “It’s happening here. It just looks different than it does over there,” explains Zorich. “It’s overt there; here it’s hidden. Because it’s hidden, there’s a lot of denial and lack of understanding.”

“Denial is one of the top hurdles we need to jump over,” agrees Cherie Benjoseph, cofounder and chief program officer at KidSafe. “Sexual abuse, sexual exploitation, and sex trafficking all fall under the radar. In the movie, it’s horrifically blatant, but here it’s done in a way that you don’t see it. Child trafficking can happen out of a child’s home, and it happens in all types of communities. Right here in Florida, there are people more than willing to buy children for sex, and if we don’t accept that as a truth, we will never be able to see and/or prevent child trafficking and abuse.”

Thankfully, there are organizations here and abroad confronting the issue. And while the problem may present itself differently in both continents, the answer to combating the issue is the same — empowerment through education.

In “The New Abolitionists,” the NGOs discreetly approach the women at bars, sometimes posing as sex tourists, offering them a chance at a different life. The girls who choose to go with the NGO are provided trauma counseling, education, skill development, and employment opportunities. Those who are able eventually build a new life outside the NGO. “I found it inspiring that these women could build beautiful lives after having gone through so much,” says Zorich.

While the NGOs in the film were helping victims who had been trafficked, here in Florida, KidSafe has been working to get ahead of the problem by teaching children personal safety, starting at age 4.

“We teach personal safety skills from a place of empowerment, not fear. We are not teaching kindergarten through fifth-grade students scary stories, we’re empowering them with protective skills, just like you empower kids with swimming skills to protect them from drowning. We empower them with skills of safety to protect them from unhealthy relationships,” explains Benjoseph.

“Ninety percent of the time, child sexual abuse and child trafficking are perpetrated by someone they know and have been groomed by,” emphasizes Benjoseph in discussing the importance of educating children from a young age, as well as adults. “We can’t prevent child sexual abuse if we’re not raising awareness about it.”

KidSafe has online programs for professionals working with children and resource pages for parents that educate them on opening up the lines of communication with their children. “As parents, we assume that our kids know we’re available and they will come to us about anything. It is something we need to remind them about, early and often,” urges Benjoseph. “Making yourself an approachable parent plays a major role in keeping our children safe. The more we talk about relationships, and reinforce personal safety in our everyday parenting, the more we can prevent.”

In 2019, Florida became the first state to require child trafficking prevention education for grades K-12. To help meet this mandate, the foundation created “Stay KidSafe!” This is a program designed for counselors and teachers to use in their classrooms and includes a platform with 3D teaching animations, along with lesson guides that include questions, answers, activities, and role-play exercises. “Stay KidSafe!” teaches age-appropriate skills, including safety voice, circle of safe adults, safe touch/unsafe touch, good secrets/bad secrets, and accessing help. Students do not learn about human trafficking until sixth grade. After each lesson, a newsletter is sent home to parents advising them of what their children have learned and how to reinforce those skills at home.

The “Stay KidSafe!” program is free for all Florida schools, as well as schools across the country, and is funded through donations.

For more information about “The New Abolitionists,” visit thenewabolitionistsdoc.com. For information or to get involved with KidSafe, visit kidsafefoundation.org.

Boca Raton’s Primal Forces theater company, founded in 2014 by artistic director Keith Garsson, emerges from the pandemic with new productions, a new attitude, and a new name – Boca Stage.

The company, located in The Sol Theater, at 3333 North Federal Highway is a professional theater company that produces new and topical works geared to a sophisticated theatergoer looking for alternatives to revivals and musicals.

Past productions have included the 2019 production of Emily Mann’s “Having Our Say” with Karen Stephens and Avery Somers, “Breadcrumbs” by Jennifer Haley, and  Laura Eason’s “Sex with Strangers,” which won the New Times Best Play of 2016.

“We want to be more aligned with our home and the City of Boca Raton,” says Garsson, about the name change, and says he is “excited to be coming back.”

He works in tandem with Genie Croft, artistic director and founding member of the multi-Carbonnell nominated Women’s Theater Project.

“All the world’s a stage,” says Croft, “and I can’t wait to be live in this world again.”

“The energy and dynamics of live theater are beyond description,” she says. “They are the essence of living, of being in the moment and transcribing those feelings to an audience.  That’s the creative process.”

Last March 13, the company shut down on what was to be Opening Night of their production of award-winning playwright Kenneth Lin’s “Warrior Class,” a modern-day variation on the Faust legend which explores the underbelly of a political campaign.  Lin has also written for the Netflix series, “House of Cards.”

The play is currently rescheduled for November 2021.

Garsson credits his landlords, Keith and Sara Grant, for their flexibility and financial help during the pandemic and says, “Without them, it could have been the end of the game.”

He also appreciates his loyal subscriber base which he says, “has been great.”  Boca Stage will honor all tickets purchased for the canceled season for a future date.  Garsson says he will personally call each and every subscriber to assure them the theater is returning in November and their tickets are good for a future performance.

“My heart goes out to our actors and designers who bore the brunt of losing their livelihoods during this past year of the pandemic,” says Garsson, who also runs a full-time software business.

“Of all the people who are allowed to complain, I’m not one of them,” he jokes.

While some theater companies found ways to produce virtual productions or other streaming shows Garsson says, “We are purists.  We believe live theater and all its drama is best seen live.”

“It’s hard to compete with Netflix or Amazon,” he says.  “Why would people stream my production when they can watch “Bridgerton” or “The Crown” or “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel?”

“The way I see it is I’d rather have nothing, than settle for less,” says Garsson, referring to what he says is a phrase “loosely translated from the Yiddish.”

Luckily, this fall people will have the choice to see live theater at Boca Stage, with one caveat – everybody must be vaccinated.

Garsson plans to ensure both patrons and employees are vaccinated by Oct. 1.  “Safety is our priority; we can’t risk anyone’s safety,” he says.

Croft concurs, “We cannot wait to bring our creative vision once again to an audience sharing in the evolving moments of a story coming to life,” she says.  “I look forward to sharing this experience with our audience.”

Besides “Warrior Class,” on deck for the 2021-22 season (the company’s 7th season) are four South Florida premieres featuring characters struggling against the system and tackling topics such as Hollywood legends and myths, (Elton Townend Jones’s “The Unremarkable Death of Marilyn Monroe”), big pharma (Kate Fodor’s “Rx”), children’s rights (“Luna Gale,” a new play by Pulitzer Prize-finalist Rebecca Gilman), and the lunacy of the military bureaucracy in playwright Richard Strand’s “Ben Butler,” a Civil War comedy about real-life army general.

“Our audiences have made it quite clear that they enjoy the little-known plays with interesting topics,” says Garsson, who reads approximately 50-60 plays each month while exercising on the treadmill.

“We’re very lucky that today’s playwrights are providing works that are both relevant and different from the standard fare,” he says.  “Barring unforeseen events, this will be a good season.”

Tickets are on sale now for $45 ($50 Sunday matinees.)  Subscriptions may be purchased at www.bocastage.org or by calling 1-866-811-4111. Individual ticket sales will be available in mid-September. Thursday previews, Friday, and Saturday nights 8 p.m. curtain, and Saturday and Sunday 2 p.m. curtain.