‘THEATRE AS LEARNING TOOL’ : AN UNTYPICAL AUDIENCE OF TYPICAL TEEN-AGERS

It was definitely not your typical theater audience. They applauded after each scene. They laughed roundly at every funny line. They cracked gum, tapped their sneakers, went to the restrooms in pairs. Made catcalls at every sexual innuendo and smooching sounds during the scene-change blackouts.

The 475 high schoolers were part of the Los Angeles Theatre Center’s “Theatre as a Learning Tool” program, an ongoing project between LATC and Los Angeles city area schools that is attempting to bridge the gap between the theater and the classroom--and a lot of other space as well.

With the impetus from LATC producer Diane White, Educational Projects Manager Keren Goldberg developed the program two years ago. Her goal: “To have the theater service the community--as a cultural event, and to offer instructional support for the teachers.”

To that end, each teacher is presented with a number of materials to be utilized before and after each performance: a study guide with a description of the play, possible themes for discussion, a vocabulary list, word games and a historical/mythological overview.

For their own part, the teen-agers (about 13,500 have participated so far) have a responsibility in the process as well: In line with LATC’s emphasis on giving back, each of the students is expected to produce some type of response--in the form of a letter, essay or art work--following each experience.

In this instance, the choice of “Tamer of Horses” (which recently closed at the theater) was ideal. William Mastrosimone’s modern-day story of a Hector--a 17-year-old street punk adjusting to a new foster home--has issues that touch many of the kids’ lives: alienation, illiteracy (which Hector suffers), power struggles, morality and crime and punishment.

After the performance, Goldberg, discussion leader Jose Luis Valenzuela and actors Joe Morton (who plays the father-figure Ty), Lynn Whitfield (his wife Georgiane) and Esai Morales (Hector) took their places on the stage. What in the play, they asked, had struck the audience hardest?

“That Hector betrayed Ty.”

“When Hector broke down and cried about the man dying” (one of the youth’s earlier victims on the subway, who suffered a heart attack during the robbery).

“When Hector says he doesn’t know how to act, because he’s never had a mother or father.”

With the statements came many questions: Was there a sequel, so they could see what happened to Hector? How long did it take to build the set, and was it the same one used for each play? Did Hector steal to get attention--and really want to get caught? Was he a kleptomaniac? Where did the actors train? How did Whitfield reconcile Georgiane’s undoing of Hector? Is the world more dangerous for Hector before or after (his moral/literary education)?

Afterward, the actors joined the students in the lobby, accepting compliments and signing autographs till the schoolbuses arrived.

Morales was clearly a hit with the young girls. “They want to know where I’m from (New York), if I’m Puerto Rican (yes), if I was in the movie ‘Bad Boys’ (yes),” he said with a winning but tired smile.

A product of New York’s High School for the Performing Arts and Off Broadway (“Short Eyes” at the Second Stage, “The Tempest” at the New York Shakespeare Festival), Morales, 24, insisted that he doesn’t “prefer one audience--adults or kids--to the other. You get some things from one group, different things from another.”

Although buoyed by the teen-agers’ enthusiasm in the light moments, the actor admitted to a nervousness in the more dramatic scenes. “The girls are prone to (sighing), the guys have to be cool. They cover it up with nervous laughter: ‘Hah! ‘ “

Does it affect his performance? “Sure. It’s much harder for me to freak out when they’re laughing. At the end, most of the adults are choked up and quiet, because they know the ramifications (of Hector’s failure). The kids are too close to it to realize how really tragic it is.”

Bell Gardens High teacher Mike Padilla felt that the students were touched--perhaps more than they were willing to let on. “They were so quiet going home,” he marveled. “With every play we see, the kids enjoy it, learn from it. But with ‘Tamer,’ it was really something more. This had to do with a lot of their lives. They got it, and they felt for what was going on.”

Project manager Goldberg agreed, stressing that teen-agers often bring an additional perspective to the theatergoing experience. “Eighty-five percent of these kids have never seen a play before,” she said. “They often have much fewer defenses than adults, fewer pre c onceived ideas about what the world is or isn’t.

“When we brought them to see (Pinter’s) ‘The Birthday Party,’ everyone said, ‘Pinter for kids?’ Well, they had very strong ideas about what Pinter was trying to say: who was the parent, who was really death in disguise.”

In fact, the program began (at Los Angeles Actors Theatre, predecessor to LATC) with an equally ambitious choice, Charles Marowitz’s updated version of “Hamlet.”

“It was a great way to begin,” Goldberg noted, “because it was a classic--and it was shortened only 70 minutes. We figured their attention span could take it.” The follow-up entry, a 3 1/2-hour staging of Chekhov’s “The Three Sisters,” “blew them out of their seats. It made us realize again that adults always underestimate how far a young person can stretch.”