Theatre for the Very Young in Camden: a way out?

The Theatre of Social Change



At the CMU drama department in the late 60s, in a burp of social relevance The Living Theatre was invited to perform in the Skibo ballroom. They smoked pot on stage, passing the joint to the 8-year-old son of two Theatre members, got indignantly naked and said things intended to make the audience uncomfortable in the name of social relevance. They were there to shake our complacency. And we, as students, were told that theatre could be a potent force for social change. It could make things better. This confused me because I was neither shaken nor stirred by The Living Theatre. I was annoyed, like finding the only milk in the fridge had gone bad. And I was disappointed. I was all about social change in those days, and this was supposed to be an instrument for it that was right up my alley. But after seeing it, I thought a good comedy was a better force for social change than political theatre like that.

For many years I wondered how exactly a good performance could create just and stable social change and found no easy answer. Now I realize I was thinking about it from the wrong point of view. I was wondering how I, as a performer, could present story and character to a viewer in a way which would change their mind and heart and send them off intent on doing good. The problem was that while I could think of a lot of performance pieces which could delight and inspire, the effect was most certainly transient. I could conceive of moving an audience but not in a way which would follow through to positive, stable and ongoing social change. I was looking for change on the wrong side of the footlights.

On Wednesday, October 26, 2011, Imagination Creation Children’s Theatre is taking its spirited play Hieronymus, a Frog to play for k-3 audiences of school children from the Catholic Partnership Schools in Camden, NJ. Camden, statistically, is the worst urban area in the entire United States.

What is remarkable is that the actors, who all have day jobs, have taken time from work to play these two performances, and the director, Charles J. Gill, has cut the company’s fee in half in acknowledgement of the creative and economic wilderness in which these young ones live. “We felt it was important to get live theatre to these children,”said Gill. “Most of them have never seen it before, and, unfortunately, most will never see it again.” But even discounted, the project was nearly stillborn. Half price was still beyond the reach of the schools.

But here the worlds of theatre and church happily dovetailed. An anonymous “angel” came forward to saved the day. Lori Chaffer, Coordinator of Community Engagement for the schools, told me this happens with some regularity but too infrequently to make up for the crumbling economic base.

The population is penniless. Over half the children get winter coats from the school as gifts at Christmas. 93% of qualify for free lunch. And the school doesn’t stop with lunch. They give breakfast, lunch and a snack. They give the young ones as much food as they can during the day knowing that there will likely be little of it at home at night.

She is passionate in defense of the role of the arts, particularly for the impoverished. “The arts,”says Ms. Chaffer,“speak louder than the shots of guns or the angry voices of parents and neighbors constantly blasting outside their doors and windows. If we can give them art young enough, we can perhaps give young ones with hopelessly harsh lives a chance to find shelter in the arts for their finer, creative natures.”

I don’t know how she works there. I have to stop and cry ever couple of words just writing about it. To go there day after day and face this awful thing we do to innocents in poverty in our culture is an astonishing feat in my eyes. New Jersey is at once the richest state per capita of the 50 and home to the worst urban area in the nation. I’m glad there are folks with the fortitude to do the work needing to be done in Camden. And I’m proud to think that theatre can be a significant piece of breaking this cycle and bringing this idiocy to an end.


Click here to see the follow-up story, a very moving tale.