The Garden of Eden Productions is a very popular productions company in the Philadelphia area.  However, it’s not just a productions company.  It’s actually more of a non-profit organization that focuses on the development of the youth from 5 to 22 years old.  The organization uses its strengths in music, theater, writing, film and performance to do this.  In addition, they also hold and attend events.  You can check out this post to know more.

What is your organization’s name?

The Garden Of Eden Productions

What is your name and what is your affiliation with the organization?

Bethel Bates, Founder of The Garden Of Eden Productions

Please tell us a little bit about you.

Bethel Bates – Novelist, Playwright, and Songwriter; born and raised on the streets of Philadelphia, profiles her works mostly through the eyes of the urban experience of the African American culture. Her life growing up on the Northside of Philadelphia gave way to a strong literary voice for which she expresses herself and her everyday living experiences in a journal of short stories, songs and poems.

Bethel Bates, born Bethel Sheppard, discovered the wonderful world of writing at the early age of ten. It was at that age that she would write her first poem entitled “My Dreams”. At age twelve she composed her first song, “Party At The Disco”, that she along with her two sister would perform in front of friends and family members. At age thirteen, she composed “The Game Is Over”, for which she was offered her first music contract by the Scotton Music Corporation for the purchase to the rights of the song. Recently, she has composed and created many other short stories and plays to include, “The Color Of Aids” and “Eye Of The Storm”.

Bethel credits music Songwriter Pioneers, and Authors such as Tina Turner, Abbey Lincoln, Terry McMillian, Nikki Giovani, Mayo Angelou, Sheila M. Goss, and great African American Poet, Paul Laurence Dunbar, “We Wear The Mask”, for their unpremeditated, extemporized, and unchallenged form or originality and ingenuity. Her love for writing began to take shape as a young adult when she realized that writing was more to her than just a hobby, it was her passion.

In December 2009, Bethel published her first book, “Hot Buttered Biscuits And Jam” the Memoirs Of Seven, where a down trodden woman analyzes, love, friendship, faith, forgiveness, and the long time destructive relationship she has with her husband of seventeen years and how it mirrors the relationships of the women who have proceeded her in her family lineage. She struggles with the idea of leaving the unhealthy relationship and its alternative as it relates to the number seven. Her second book is set to be published in 2012.

Bethel affiliates herself with organizations such as: Black Women’s Playwright Group of Washington DC, Writers Guild Of Maryland, Women and Forensic Science, Black Philly Go Green, and Children Of The Arts of Philadelphia, and a slew of other non-profit organizations whose endeavors reach outward towards the arts, community awareness, and or our youth. In addition, she’s gone on to form “Conduit To New Beginnings”, along with long time friend and collaborator, Antionette Thwaites, a non-profit organization whose humanitarianism goals are to make life a little less burdensome for those who have experienced hardships or tragedy by nominating candidates for gifts and monetary awards achieved through major fundraising events.

How / why did your organization start? (Background, History)

“The Garden Of Eden Productions”, a multicultural 501(C)(3) non-profit Theater Production Company, seeks to recruit the youth from the streets of Philadelphia into a Thespian Program that offers the stage as a vehicle and a place of expression as the youth redirects misplaced energy towards the stage as they act, dance, and sing, as well as write, direct, and produce stage plays and short films that resemble the stories of their own lives.

What is your organization’s objective? (What does it do?)

The Garden of Eden Productions is dedicated to shaping and changing the lives of our inner city youth through the introduction to Thespian Instruction, and Education of Technology and of Media Arts & Film. The GOEP realizes that the Arts is a very significant, affective and necessary tool of education, therapy, and healing as it stimulates the intellect and fuels cognitive responses in the area of originality and creativity that would allow for freedom of expression and the defining of oneself.

The Garden of Eden Productions is committed to encouraging our young people to get involved with every area of the arts to include; theater, music, dance, scripting, stage production etc. We are always looking for volunteers to come and share their gifts/talents, or sheer desire to be a part of something bigger than themselves.

Our goal is to bring together people from all walks of life and to use the stage as a forum of expression that we may create a wonderful atmosphere of creativity and bring a message of awareness to our audiences. The GOEP’s viewpoint is simply this; that the young people in our communities need a basis on which to place their ideas, their beliefs, their views, and their opinions. They are seeds that need to be planted, fostered, and cultivated if they are to grow and become good crop of the earth.

How long has the organization been around?

Since 2006

What kind of events / activities does your organization do?

The organization has performed at high schools, special events, or whatever program they’ve been asked to perform in.  The GOEP has also designed a pilot program, “Eye on the Prize”, which has incorporated into this organizational composition;  deity, morals, ethics, and principals.

The GOEP offers a variety of workshops to include , but not limited to instruction in production, reading and writing music, lighting, props, sound and stage, song, dance, rhythm and movement, choreography, film, directing and cinematography.

How can people get in touch with your organization (or you)? (website,email, telephone etc)

For more information, call 215 760-8176 or write:

The Garden of Eden Productions

PO Box 33112, Phila. PA 19142 c/o Bethel Bates

You can also visit the website at http://www.gardenofedenphiladelphia.org/index.html and you can also e-mail them at gardenofedenprodo@gmail.com.