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.
 

This Lines Pockets at the Expense of the Art

The Myth of The Talented 

It’s not news that the entertainment industry benefits if the world believes talent is in short supply. The bottom line of the industry would be happiest if we believed that talent was such a scarce commodity that there were only fifty or so people in the United States with real talent, several hundred with patchy talent sufficient to be paid for their work, thousands of wannabes with little or no talent fossicking about for opportunity, and hundreds of millions of completely untalented people yearning to hear and see the talented, wishing to be one, ready to pay to be in the same room with one. That works out best for the industry. Of course, it’s not news that this scarcity of talent is a lie, either.

Yet popular wisdom seems ready to go only so far in contradicting the scarce-talent myth. Yes, certainly talent is in greater supply than the industry wants us to think. But just as certainly it is not a common commodity. We’re not all Picasso. And so as to keep the number of the talented in a decent balance with the untalented, we have established authorized places where talent may be seen and recognized.

But what if talent is not limited at all? What if we are all 99.9% very much Picasso, and he us. Creativity is a human birthright. We are all natural artists. How do I know?

The craft of acting consists of standing up in public and saying things we know never have been and never could be true. Everybody knows it, so it’s okay. But acting is the art form of lying.

Here’s little Huffleburp in his ever expanding diaper sitting red-faced  and straining under the kitchen table with audible grunts rhythmically issuing from his 18-month-old throat, barely squeezing out a gasping, “No!” in response to your question of whether now would be a good time to head to the toilet. This is the birth of the actor. This is a sure sign of talent.

Theatre is based on the ability to tell a convincing lie, a thing almost all of us can do easily under some circumstances by the time we’re nine. There’s no shortage of talent. There is a shortage of encouragement and recognition.

Two illustrations: one day I was walking downtown in Philadelphia. Walking just ahead of me was a couple with a stroller in which a16 or 17 month old baby was riding contentedly, but, oddly, he was giving out a high-pitched tone like a blowing whistle. His parents were mildly annoyed, looking around  to see if anyone were looking. But I listened to his voice, and, in a revealing second, heard the emergency vehicle siren in the distance which nearly matched his pitch and rhythm. He was singing with the siren, and the only one to notice passed out of his life before there was a chance to praise it. His singing returned embarrassment from the ones he loves and respects most. Talent is not allowed to show itself in a stroller on the street.

The second happened to me at a time when I was making a good  living singing and directing a choir. I was in line at a supermarket one day, thinking about modifying a tenor part to make it more available to the voices I had. I began humming it to myself. The man behind me in line coughed and said, “Keep your day job, buddy.” I chuckled politely. I did not mention that singing was my day job and that, had he seen me in costume on stage he’d have clapped and complimented the same singing he’d dismissed at the supermarket. Talent is not allowed to show itself in line at the supermarket.

There’s no shortage of talent and no lack of discouragement. Unfortunately, we may never know how common a commodity talent is until we can stop unawarely stamping it out whenever we catch a whiff of it in unauthorized places. Yes, the industry may suffer. But the art will spring into full health and take off in directions currently undreamed of. I hope to live to see that. Heck, I plan to live to make it happen.


You may also be interested in Reclaiming Our Creative Birthright, another post on this topic. Click here to see it.

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.