Runaway Youths Put Energy Into Classes, and Discover Something Worth Working For : Acting Teacher Reaches Out to Teen-Agers

Up until the night he stole that car, Paco was getting the hang of acting class. He’d shown some natural ability. More important, he’d shown up regularly. Then came the joy ride and the police and the next thing he was sitting in Juvenile Hall.

“He was very talented,” said Marc Gass, his acting coach. “It’s a heartbreak.”

Gass is an established producer and director with a string of television specials and off-Broadway plays to his credit. For the last four months he’s been working on a different kind of project, though, with kids like Paco.

Each Thursday evening, Gass stops by a shelter for runaway teens called the Los Angeles Youth Network. He picks up five or so kids there and drives them to The Actors Center in Studio City, where he teaches an acting class. The runaways attend the $125 series of classes for free. They study beside teens who have been in television and movies for years.

Offers Advice, Money

Gass pushes and nags the runaways as much or more than he does the professionals. But he also gives them rides to and from auditions and gets them parts as extras in movies. He throws birthday parties for them and lends them money.

Paco, 16, was his first disappointment.

“Sometimes you want to wring their little necks,” Gass, 36, said in the frustration of the moment. “But you don’t because they come from homes where that happened.”

One stolen car notwithstanding, Gass’ idea of teaching acting to these troubled youths seems to have worked out pretty well so far.

“It’s not that this program has been to turn runaways into Hollywood starlets,” said Joel Schwartz, the executive director at Los Angeles Youth Network. “One of the things the kids need to be working on is self-esteem. This kind of work makes them feel proud. It makes them able to sell themselves in a job interview. It teaches them work habits.”

Look Forward to Class

Said Solloman, a tall, thin 17-year-old boy who has been in the class since November: “Before this class, there were just the problems . . . going to school and things like that. Nothing to look forward to. Then I started coming to class, and there’s something I really want to do. There’s something I look forward to.” Solloman said his mother threw him out of the house after he refused to give her money to buy drugs.

The youths are showing some surprising signs of success. On a recent Thursday night, two of them missed the class because they were working as extras on the set of the latest Whoopi Goldberg movie. Another boy was selected out of thousands of young actors and given a taped audition by NBC.

“They’ve had so much pain in their lives and you can see it in their acting,” Gass said. “I don’t think it’s far-fetched to think these kids can make it as actors. They have so much talent.”

Involvement With Drugs

The teen-agers at the Los Angeles Youth Network shelter have more often than not been involved with drugs. They range in age from 12 to 17. Some have been sexually abused by their parents. Others have been prostitutes. They come to the shelter, which is located at the Hollywood YMCA, to get off the streets. Or they are brought in by police or social workers.

The acting class is a perfect match for some of these teen-agers--they ran away to Hollywood to be in the movies. Despite his confidence in their acting abilities, Gass doesn’t harbor unrealistic dreams of stardom for his special charges. He thinks it’s important enough that they are getting involved in something.

“Some of my kids have not succeeded in anything,” Gass said. “Some of them don’t show up for school even though they’re perfectly smart. They’re not interested. They are interested in this. Besides, I can’t tell them ‘no.’ Everyone else has. I tell them, ‘Yeah, it’s hard. But you stand as good a chance as anyone else.’ ”

Chosen for Talent Pool

Cash, a sleek-looking, dark-haired 15-year-old, was the one selected to audition to be part of NBC’s teen-age talent pool from which they draw actors for certain shows. And that came scant months after he’d begun in class.

“It’s a big break. Actors go for years and don’t get a break like that,” Cash said. “But I have no great expectations. Right now, I’m going to school to be a VCR technician.”

Cash and the others must stay in school or fulfill other requirements with Los Angeles Youth Network in order to attend Gass’ class, Schwartz said.

When a youth comes to the shelter, he or she is allowed to stay for 72 hours. Then a decision must be made. The boy or girl must enter the shelter’s program or leave. Since these youths are minors, they need parental consent to remain or, if their parents can’t be reached, a police record check to show that they aren’t wanted for a felony. (Because of that agreement with parents, the youths can be identified in print by their first names only.)

Choices Offered

Once in the program, the teen-agers have a number of choices: They can move back with their family or a relative, they can be placed in a foster or group home or join the military or Job Corps. They can even live on their own, following a work and budget schedule devised in cooperation with a shelter counselor.

The teen-agers in Gass’ class fall into several of these categories. And Gass has some requirements of his own. The Bronx native laid down the law on the first day of class.

“I said to them, ‘If you are serious and if you show up, I will help you get a start,’ ” he recalled. “I do not coddle them. They have to be reliable and responsible.”

In class on a recent Thursday night, Gass was the stereotypical acting coach. The students were working through a play Gass wrote that mirrors their own lives: it is about a gathering of runaways and middle-class kids.

Thorough Taskmaster

Gass quizzes the students on hitting their stage marks, recognizing the director’s commands and always knowing where the cameras are.

“I want you to love that camera!” he yells. “The camera loves you!”

In one scene, two of the students discuss homosexuality.

“Don’t be tentative,” Gass complains. “Make this real. Get behind these lines.”

In another scene, a group trades stories about being raped. Angela Lee, 14, plays the part of a naive suburbanite who says that the only thing anyone ever made her do was her homework.

Angela is, in fact, a suburban teen-ager. She lives with her family in North Hollywood and has been acting since age five. She has appeared on such television shows as “Who’s the Boss,” “Love Boat” and “Hotel.”

Learning From Runaways

For her, acting alongside kids who have been raped, kids who have lived on the streets, has been an education in itself.

“Part of being an actor is trying to put yourself in other peoples’ shoes,” she said. “What they’ve been through, these are things you only hear about.”

Gass first became involved with the runaways when he called Childrens Hospital in Los Angeles and offered to be a volunteer. The hospital supervises Los Angeles Youth Network, as well as several other runaway centers, and referred Gass there.

“When he first approached us and wanted to know if he could do some work for us, I told him we had a certain number of kids who were interested in the industry,” Schwartz recalled. “Part of our philosophy is to explore fantasies and get a sense of the reality behind that. The kids come in with a pipe dream and we’re trying to give them a realistic picture of what the industry is like.”

Gass initially visited the shelter to give a couple of workshops.

‘They Were Such Babies’

“I sat down and talked with them and they were the motleyist crew you’d ever seen,” he said. “They were such babies. But they were out there stealing cars.”

Yet, Gass--whose television directing credits include the NBC shorts series “One to Grow On,” the soap opera “Another World,” Nancy Reagan’s “Just Say No To Drugs” commercial and off-Broadway productions of “Boys from Syracuse” and “Jazz Babies”--recalled being amazed by the natural talent he saw there. That was when he invited several of the runaways to join the class. Cash remembered that first class.

“It started out just as fun,” the youth said. “Then someone acted out a monologue and it almost made me cry.”

Cash and Solloman and the others are attending class twice a week, preparing to be in a play that Gass is producing. They say they enjoy the hard work of rehearsal. Acting, they say, is a talent they want to refine.

Despite Gass’ warnings about how tough it is to make it as an actor, maybe one of these youths will make it. Even the doubtful Schwartz allows himself to daydream.

“Hopefully, one of them will go on to be a big star and decide to fund our program forevermore.”