HANDICAPPED ON A PATH TO SUCCESS IN THEATER

CARLSBAD — Watch them on stage for five minutes and the wheelchairs disappear. What becomes important are the real problems at hand: is the blond actress stage left making her entrance in shadow? Do the chickens squawk on cue?

The name Jim Troesh comes up frequently among this unusual North County theater company. The quadriplegic actor has appeared in four episodes of “Highway to Heaven,” one of which he scripted with his wife. He has co-starred on “Airwolf,” and he will soon appear in a television movie.

Bree Walker, a television anchorwoman (KGTV Channel 10), is another familiar name.

And there is Barbara C. Adside, born without legs but an unstoppable actress who, in a year’s time, appeared on six television shows (“Night Court,” “Cagney and Lacey,” “Lottery”), a McDonald’s commercial and is now working on a film.

These three are graduates of the Performing Arts Theatre of the Handicapped (PATH), a 6-year-old, nonprofit training program dedicated to helping disabled performers overcome the prejudice against them and to develop--and market--the talents they possess.

While it still holds workshops in both cities, PATH moved its headquarters from Los Angeles to Carlsbad in 1984, where World Communications Inc. (WCI) donated a tiny office space and $25,000 to support PATH’s children’s workshop at the San Dieguito Playhouse. It survives with one paid employee (artistic director Al Valletta), dozens of volunteers, Hollywood supporters and plenty of determination.

Tonight at 8 and Sunday at 2:30 p.m., PATH will present Thornton Wilder’s “Our Town” at the Carlsbad Community Cultural Arts Center in a production which features both disabled and able-bodied performers.

A lot of people will probably stay away.

PATH president and founder Bob Cole and director Valletta know that. But if they had allowed themselves to be dissuaded by the misconceptions, guilt, resistance and discomfort that most people feel when confronted with the disabled, hundreds of actors and writers would still be sitting at home, wishing.

“It’s hard for me not to get emotionally involved with this thing,” Cole said recently, after describing a long list of PATH performers. Opera singer Patrick Biggs (of the San Diego Opera), whose multiple sclerosis has confined him to a wheelchair, was one of those mentioned.

“Know how difficult it is to sing from a wheelchair? Go listen to him,” Cole urged. “You’ll get goose bumps, chills down your spine.

“It’s something that’s so beautiful to watch, to see the talent that these people have,” Cole said. “Forget the handicap! The talent is there, and that’s what I keep reminding them.”

Cole is a semi-retired businessman, the father of two profoundly deaf children (both married now) whose personal interest always kept him busy working for the causes of deaf people. His show business involvement came in the late ‘40s, when he discovered that actors made wonderful candidates for the New York temporary agency Cole owned. He put them to work as typists and clerks: Dustin Hoffman, Jason Robards, Alice Ghostly, Barbra Striesand, Robert Vaughn, Robert Duvall and Tom Bosley.

Bosley is now PATH’s first vice president. He heads a star-studded list of directors and advisory board members that includes, thanks to Bosley’s enthusiasm, nearly everyone involved with “Happy Days” in 1978, when Cole first described to Bosley the dream that became PATH.

“We decided that the best thing we could do for these people was to offer them some training--free training--but we wanted professionals. We felt the first group we would want would be people who were being discriminated against in the industry,” Cole said. “We had no idea how many there were, by the way.

“We were not selling handicaps, we were selling talent,” Cole explained, a phrase which has become PATH’s motto. “I didn’t want these people to be chosen because of pity or sympathy.”

Those concepts are nowhere to be found in PATH acting, writing or radio workshops.

Director Al Valletta deals with wheelchairs, crutches, weakening illnesses and any other limitations as directing problems, no different than squawking chickens and misplaced lights.

Why does the acting coach devote his time to PATH?

“It’s purposeful,” he explained. “It has meaning to it. In this business you can get awfully jaded, and you become very self-centered. At least this is doing something for people, which I think life should be all about.”

The cast of “Our Town” credits Valletta’s skill and patience with drawing out their abilities.

“I think he’s the greatest thing on two feet,” said Joyce Rue of El Cajon, whose obesity kept her from performing in front of people before she joined PATH. “I found out I’m as comfortable in front of a camera as a meatball is in spaghetti. Something happens to me, I just come alive.”

She hopes to carry on professionally (“Why can’t I get character parts?”), and more importantly, to influence others by her example, letting them know that they, too, are worthwhile. “When I found this medium, that I can touch people and make a difference from the stage, then my life here has meant something.”

Lisa Hansen, a 37-year-old victim of a drunk driver confined to her wheelchair, also thinks her work on stage will present a positive role model for others. “There’s more to this than just the acting,” she said. “It’s something that needs to be said to the public. It’s time for them to get a different image and to realize that we are part of society and we’re just regular people. And it can happen to anybody,” the former body-surfing expert added.

For 14-year-old Erica Gjertson, PATH has meant the opportunity to do the acting she has longed for since she was 7. Until now, she thought her cerebral palsy was an impassable barrier.

“I would like (people) to come to this production because that will show them that the disabled can perform just as normal people,” said Gjertson. “This wheelchair does not matter. It’s just the person that’s in it, but the wheelchair is not there. The directors and the people here see us as normal people. We’re not normal, but to them, despite the chair, we are.”

Cole hopes to extend this weekend’s performances if PATH is able to find another performance space in San Diego County. The organization also hopes to overcome the resistance that has kept it from receiving the grant monies it needs to hire a secretary, interpreters for the deaf and teachers for all the people waiting to join PATH workshops.

He said some funding agencies are reluctant to give money to a project they think has an impossible goal. Perhaps Cole should refer them to professional performers like Jim Troesh, Bree Walker and Barbara Adside.