With all the Williambridge-Wakefield neighborhood its stage, Impact-Mind Builders (formerly named Positive Youth Troupe) of the 21-year-old community organization known as Mind-Builders Creative Arts Co. presents Northeast Bronx young people, ages 10-21, with the opportunity to explore their problems and express themselves. Under the creative wing of veteran youth director Jamal Joseph, 50 young people a year present original musical theater productions that dramatize situations - interpersonal, family, peers, and value conflicts - that touch their lives.

Serving the community's predominantly African-American, Caribbean, and Latino youth, Impact-Mind Builders (IMB) has three basic instructional components - training, performance, and counseling - in a three-stage process to help participants build relationships with peers, develop leadership and management skills, and gain work experience.

In the first stage, all participants undertake conflict resolution training. In the second stage, they learn methods for assisting in resolving conflict. In the third stage, they begin creating and rehearsing dramatic work. The youth share their personal experiences and use situations they have faced in their lives as the basis for performances. Because all theater pieces tour as works-in-progress, the young people revise the work throughout the run to reflect new insights acquired through audience discussions and questionnaires at the end of performances.

Each year IMB reaches thousands of youngsters and adults in schools, group homes, community centers, juvenile detention centers, churches, and professional theaters. Their portrayal of today's youth in the musical theater format captivates audiences' imagination and offers tangible guidance in combating negative peer pressure. Presentations also reaffirm, for audience and artists alike, that family and community support are critical to the survival and success of young people. Most importantly, the Mind-Builders theater experience assists participants in understanding that conflict is unavoidable and omnipresent and gives them the tools needed to confront it as a positive learning experience.