Theatre for Children in Camden: Yes! A way out.

this is the second in a series. Click here to read the first for the entire set-up.

The Best Time I Ever Had

(at any play, ever)

On Wednesday, October 26 2011 ImaginationCreation Theatre Productions played two shows for children in Camden. I attended the first. This is the story. 

The Diocese of Camden administers to the spiritual and educational needs of over 500,000 people in six South Jersey counties, including some of the wealthiest and the very poorest. It oversees over 50 schools educating more than 20,000 students, most of whom have nothing do to with this story. This is the story of a few more than 300 students from 5 schools which teach the most vulnerable in the Diocese—the schools of the Camden School Partnership.

Primarily serving the children of the City, the 5, k-8 elementary schools located throughout the City of and towns bordering Camden, like everyone else in this economy, felt the big pinch three years ago. It costs $7000 a year to educate one student and nearly no parent in the City of Camden pays more than $1800 of that cost. The Diocese was facing school shutdowns. In an attempt to preserve the local school character of the education being offered Camden families, these five schools joined under a single umbrella in 2008 as the Camden School Partnership. They share resource and coordinate activities.

This move has allowed these schools not only to maintain but expand arts enrichment programs.  Perkins Center for the Arts, for instance, sponsors two artists in residence for the group. In addition to visual arts, music is a daily creative experience for these young ones. This sounds a bit counterintuitive to me. As districts all over the country cut arts funding as secondary to basic education, isn’t that like serving icing but no cake? 

I would get strong argument on that point from bright-eyed, energetic Holy Name School principal, Patricia Quinter. She argues with passion and conviction that these children need the arts even more at school than others. There probably will not be much of it outside school. I ask why they need the arts in particular? She says, in essence, to soften the brutality of their lives and give their souls a place to rest and refresh. I ask her if there were any particular successes, a student with a life-changing story connected to the arts. Her eyes soften and she looks at a distant spot and smiles slightly. “All of them,” she said.

I press her for specifics. I know I’m writing this story, and I want to put a human face on it. But no one stands out in her memory at that moment. We’re outside the school on a brisk day, she in short sleeves, watching students arrive and greeting them, giving directions to students, answering questions. She has a few things on her mind. Business takes her back into the school.

Today is a theatre day for the Partnership Schools. Two theatre groups will be playing for students at three different Partnership schools. I am sitting outside the well-used steps and front doors of Holy Name School on North 5^th Street in my mobility scooter. I am waiting for the arrival of Imagination Creation Theatre, scheduled to play two shows today: one here in the morning and one in the afternoon at St. Joseph’s School on Federal Street. I would wait inside Holy Name, but this building has no handicapped access and all entrances are up steps. So I sit outside and await the arrival of strong men.

It is a pleasantly brisk day in a neighborhood which may generously be called seedy. Most of the foot traffic is school related. I feel slightly uncomfortable sitting outside a school. I’m 60. If I saw me, I’d wonder what I was doing there.

Out comes Lori Chaffer, the member of the Camden Partnership Schools’ team who arranges and coordinates events like this for the over 1000 k-8 students. She sits on the step near my scooter but warns me away from a handshake. She’s feeling under the weather and demurs to pass her germs around. I thank her. We chat.

She, too, tells me how important it is for these students to get exposure to the arts early and often. She is passionate and direct. So that’s what drags her out of bed and into work when she feels like this, I thought. But I recognize something in her voice: a weariness which has nothing to do with her health. I heard it in Patricia Quinter’s voice, too. I recognize it because I hear it in my wife’s voice quite often. My wife is a nurse working with pregnant women in a center city clinic. It is how her voice sounds when she comes home on a frigid night in winter after being unable to help a 24-year-old patient, 15 weeks pregnant and a mother of three, whose sister just kicked her and the children out that morning. The shelters are full. These people have nowhere to go. It is the tone of her voice on days when she doesn’t need to come home to watch Jeopardy. It comes right into her office on an hourly basis. My full heart and no little love go out to the people with the strength to face these stories every day.

I ask Lori Chaffer if she has any specific examples of young ones in the schools who’ve been positively effected by the arts enrichments? I explain I want to put a human face on my story. But she isn’t privy to the day-to-day stuff with the children. She arranges and coordinates the events. Better to ask the principal and teachers, she advises.

As we chat, she keeps looking across the street. I glance over. There are three men on the corner talking and gesturing. “Drug dealers,” she says. “They busted them on the corner the other day. Now they’re back.” I realize that a 60 year old man on a mobility scooter outside the school is not the main worry in a place like this.

Imagination Creation arrives at 9:00 for the 9:30 curtain. In a whirlwind of activity overseen by director Chuck Gill and Technical Director Travis Lawrence, the sets, lights, props, sound and I are all shouldered and hoisted up the steps and into the Church sanctuary,  now used mainly for school assemblies. The play will be staged in the altar space. We’re expecting 160 k-3 students for this performance, half from Holy Name, half bused from Sacred Heart School.

A third grade class from Holy Name is ceremoniously seated in the back three pews. I scoot over to have a word with the teacher. He is Aaron Bracey, and he keeps an ever vigilant eye on his charges as he chats with me, stopping every once in a while to remind a student that we are in Church. He, like every other staff member I’ve spoken with, tells me with heartfelt conviction that it is critical for these young ones to have early and repeated exposure to the arts.

I agree heartily and explain that I’m writing a story, want a human face for it, and can he think of a single incident which might dramatize the benefit of the arts for these young ones?

He thinks but says it’s more of an overall lightening of spirit. It also gets them focused on their school work and grades. Students in the enrichment programs need to keep their grades up in order to qualify. They want to make art and play music. So they attend to their school work. As a teacher, he is grateful for this motivation. It works. This is the third time I’ve heard something like this.

I press him a bit. He recalls a student who came to class on a Monday distracted and unhappy, having had a very bad weekend. Mr. Bracey told the young one to take the first part of the day drawing, which he did.

“And that lifted his mood,” I ask?

“Well, it gave him expression which. . .yes, did lift his mood.”

I’m glad to hear that, but that’s not quite the singular, dramatic example I’d like. I don’t press any more. And I’m still looking for an example which will give this principle a human face. 

The curtain goes up. The first note sounds, and 160 young ones are instantly engaged in the story of a frog trying against all odds to be recognized as the human being he is inside. All he needs is love. They clap and stomp and cheer and call out helpful advice, “Look out! He’s behind you!” It is marvelous! It is by far the most demonstrative, enthusiastic and engaged audience I’ve ever been part of, including Phillies’ play-off games. It is a glorious romp. The actors are in fine form, ranging through the audience, talking to and inviting young ones physically into the action of the play, high and low-fiving eager, outstretched hands. It is coming off without a hitch. A brilliant success.

I just wish, I think to myself, that I had a truly human face to put on this story. It is at the point in the story when the frog is despondent. And so am I. But I forget where I am. I am, after all, in a church, and I have just uttered something close to a prayer. And then. . .

In front and to the left of me sat a little man who’d stood through the entire show, never taking his eyes off the stage, His arms and legs twitched with half movements as he did what the frog did, jump, catch flies, and build up hope of becoming a human being again. Then, when the frog (and I) was at his most dejected and on the verge of giving up and settling for staying a frog, just as I was giving up finding a face to put to this story, this young man raised his arm in the air and cried out at the top of his heart, “NO! DON’T GIVE UP! NEVER GIVE UP,” in a tone which rocked me back in my scooter!

He was not just yelling at a costumed actor playing a frog. Cries with that depth of fervency are not wasted on trivialities. Listen to his tone, ride it to its end. You’re in a most precarious place, and you are shouting desperate encouragement to your loved ones or yourself. This was more an embattled soldier’s cry than a happy child’s. But then it’s a fact of life that, despite the yearning of every poverty-class parent in the world, there simply isn’t enough money for lots of carefree children in places like Camden. That there are any at all is a testament to the strength and grace granted human beings where none could be anticipated. Young folks grow up very fast there. By fourth grade they don’t hold still for children’s theatre anymore. They disdain the childishness of it.

This little man was in second grade. I do not imagine the particulars of his life, but I recognize courage struggling to live when I hear it. And, while I don’t have a face to give you, I don’t think it any loss to take a voice instead. Don’t give up. Never give up. If the art of theatre evokes that depth of yearning and expression from this small man and gives him a place to put it so his passion is not ground under by the bizarre circumstances of his life, then don’t give up. Never give up. That goes for all of us. All efforts are needed. All contributions are significant. Don’t give up. Never give up. Bring the arts to all and particularly to the very young in Camden.

Support Camden Partnership School. Click this link.

Contact Imagination Creation Theatre Productions for a performance in your school by clicking this link.