A CHILD’S PLAY, BUT SERIOUSLY

“Our goal is to deal with fear, not encourage it,” says Peter Brosius, director of the Mark Taper Forum’s Improvisational Theatre Project. “It’s a ridiculous fiction that kids aren’t concerned. Kids know what’s going on. To pretend they don’t is insane.”

The company’s new children’s production, “One Thousand Cranes,” confronts nuclear war anxiety. The show, which Brosius says he’s been wanting to do for a long time, is a sensitive tie-in with the Los Angeles Unified School District’s curriculum on Nuclear-Age issues.

Brosius, in black jacket, jeans and boots, is a youthful 34 with longish blond hair and glasses. His quick grin belies an intense energy and political concern.

“There’s a strong history at the Taper of creating work about the times and situations we live in. What we’re doing is part of (that),” Brosius said.

In celebration of the Taper’s 20th anniversary, today and Sunday the public has a chance to see the show that hundreds of students, third grade and up, are viewing in their schools.

The Montebello Intermediate School auditorium was hushed. A death scene was taking place on stage--a young girl dying in her mother’s arms. The audience’s response was emotional; children and teachers wiped their eyes.

In Colin Thomas’ “One Thousand Cranes,” an 11-year-old American boy struggles with his increasing fear of a nuclear holocaust. His story blends with the real-life story of Sadako Sasaki, a lively, little Japanese girl who became a symbol of courage and peace following her death from leukemia 10 years after the Hiroshima blast.

According to project educational coordinator Barbara Leonard, a 1984 poll of 1,100 young people found that 75% were afraid there will be a nuclear war. Leonard prepared the teachers’ study guide used in conjunction with the play. “One Thousand Cranes” strives to replace a child’s feelings of powerlessness with action, without pretending there are easy solutions.

The Improvisational Theatre Project has come a long way from its Story Theatre roots. Formed in 1971, briefly under the directorship of Story Theatre actor Peter Bonerz, then under Wallace Chappell, it was a new kind of children’s theater, using theater games and improvisation techniques to present fairy tales and fables.

Over the years, the directors changed--Chappell, then John Dennis, now Brosius. The company has changed as well, becoming as much an outreach program as a performance company. It goes directly to the source--young people--for material, using its improvisational techniques in research and development workshops.

Far away from fairy tales, the theater project has dealt with many heavy-duty problems affecting children, including addictive behavior, broken families, immigrant problems and peer pressure. Brosius defends the approach:

“I don’t think of us as being an issue-oriented company in the sense that our goal is to find the next (popular) issue. This is a company which attempts to research what’s going on in young people’s lives.

“Our job is to be anthropologists. We’re talking about another culture, a separate set of signs, of problems. (Children’s) perceptions are different in relation to fantasy, to dreams and to authority. These are all areas for theater, because they’re areas for exploration.”

Mark Taper Forum artistic director Gordon Davidson acknowledges that there are those who are not comfortable with the airing of such heavy issues for children. “One particular source said, ‘Come back when you have something else.’ ”

The 1981 musical “Guns” was another production Davidson recalls as meeting with resistance. “It was anti-gun and disturbed some school administrators, but the message of the play was to know the consequences of an action.”

(“Guns” was written by then writer-in-residence Doris Baizley for the project’s 1981-82 season. Playwright Baizley was with the Improvisational Theatre Project for seven years. “It was like graduate school for me,” she says.)

Davidson voices strong support for the Taper’s youth theater, hoping its effects translate into action for some kids. “One job is to get a problem talked about. How do we take it past that?” he wonders.

His dream is to find a permanent home for the company, which now only tours schools, giving one or two public performances each year. But funding for the arts in general is increasingly hard to come by.

Playing it safe is not what the theater company is about. For director Brosius the struggle is worthwhile.

“We live in a city with 87 different languages in the public school system. So much is possible here and the need is so great. The arts provide discipline, they provide a sense of possibility, a sense of hope and understanding of the world.”

Serious words, serious subjects--yet the Improvisational Theatre Project is also hip and humorous, avoiding the turn-off taint of moral judgments or force-fed education. The truth in its productions is the result of an articulated understanding of its audience.

“One Thousand Cranes” plays tonight at 8 and Sunday at 11:30 a.m. (213) 410-1062.