The effects of U.S. policy on European social challenges is the subject of a new Los Angeles Poverty Department community performance project in Gent, Belgium. LAPD, Nieuwpoort Theater and a community cast will open "Legal Illegal" March 21, looking at the ways U.S. policy impinges on Belgian sovereignty, including secret CIA flights, restrictions on use of the harbor and immigration policy. "LAPD’s theater work is gaining attention in Europe," says LAPD on its Web site, "due to the social challenges there now: pressures to dismantle the social safety net, demands of war on terror, war on drugs -- all American exports. Theater artists there, where work has been pretty aestheticized for many years, are now discovering engaged theater as a means of understanding and resisting current pressures." [LINK]