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The Hackney Empire is forging a pioneering exchange programme with a Harlem theatre that will see a company of east London performers make their New York stage debut this month.
Seventeen young people aged 16 to 21 are travelling to the US this week to take part in a festival at the National Black Theatre of Harlem.
The trip is the first in a cultural exchange intended to take place annually until 2012, with American teenagers bringing their own work to Hackney next year.
Susie McKenna, the Empire's associate director, said: "I felt Hackney and Harlem were sister towns. Both had been gateways - into New York or London - and had a lot of immigrants." The Hackney performers have worked with the Empire's audience development programme since it was founded nine years ago.
The exchange was cancelled last summer when the visit was first scheduled to happen due to a lack of funds. Only last week the scheme's cash-raising drive - much of it run by the teenagers themselves - secured the £27,000 required.
The group will present A Midsummer Night's Madness, a loose adaptation of Shakespeare's classic comedy, as part of a whistlestop five-day tour. Rashmika Torchia, 17, an A-level student at Clapton Girls' Technology College, said: "I'm so excited. I've never been to America. All I ever wanted to do was be a professional performer. I started as an actor and the Empire got me really interested in dance so now dance is really on a par."
Renell Shaw, 21, joined the Empire programme as a rapper but the experience encouraged him to learn the double bass and study music business studies at the University of Guildford.
He is now working with Channel 4 and the London Philharmonic as well as being assistant musical director for the Harlem trip.
"Going with the people I've grown up with creatively is a humbling feeling and I'm anxious to see how we're going to do out there," he said.
