Fighting Drugs, Gang Violence With a PlayDon’t...

Fighting Drugs, Gang Violence With a Play

Don’t ever tell Ed Morales that there’s no solution to the gang and drug problem. He’s living proof that there is.

“I came from a family that was heavily into drugs,” Morales says. “By the time I was 10, I knew I was destinted to be a drug addict.”

When Morales came back from Vietnam he was hooked on heroin. Hanging with gang members from his childhood neighborhood--a part Orange County called Tokes Town--was his social life. Stealing with his homeboys was his livelihood, the only way he could support his $200-a-day habit.

“My vocabulary went down to about 25 words, and 10 had to do with drugs,” he says.

No one ever accuses Morales of being inarticulate these days. As pastor and founder of the San Jose branch of Victory Outreach Church, Morales has put the anti-drug/anti-gang message of the 20-year-old Victory Outreach organization, first founded in East Los Angeles by Sonny Arguinzoni, into the form of a play.

Morales said that when he started the San Jose church eight years ago, “the PCP problem was big and I couldn’t get anyone to come to church. So we started putting on plays, like ’18 With a Bullet’ and ‘Burnout’--all nice little plays. But then we did this play, ‘Duke of Earl’. . . .”

Suddenly everything changed. Gang members started listening and families of gang members started coming, too. “Mothers would come up to us and say, ‘That’s exactly what happened to my son,’ ” Morales says.

Even non-gang members showed up. “Drugs aren’t just in the ghetto,” Morales says, “the problem hits everyone--white-collar workers to no workers.”

What grabs audiences most is the reality captured in the play. But in the beginning, some Christian groups felt that the play was too realistic.

Morales said the cast put liquor labels over Coca Cola cans and had phony joints made with oregano. Most cast members were former gang members and still looked the part. Clean-cut, straight-and-narrow types were intimidated by this raw style of Christianity. “But when they’d come to the play and see the altar call, they’d change their mind,” Morales said.

The play became so successful that Morales got funding to make a 16-mm film from his original “Duke of Earl” story. The film is now shown through church groups across the country.

Now Morales has written “Duke of Earl II,” which looks at the character’s lives examined in the first “Duke of Earl,” but three years later. “The first play didn’t have much heavy violence” because it showed the characters when they were young and “just beginning to get into drugs,” Morales says. But in the second play, “Some have gone to prison and others have freaked out and done time in mental institutions. Now they’re not just fighting over gangs and someone’s turf, but over drugs.”

Music is an important part of the play. Songs such as “Shotgun” by Jr. Walker & the All Stars, and Al Green’s “I’m So Tired of Being Alone” help the kids see themselves in the play. “We portray their lives,” Morales says.

The play also shows that there is a way out. The kids are encouraged to join the Victory Outreach rehabilitation program, similar to the one that got Morales away from drugs. It’s a tough, discipline-filled system, and Morales is the first to admit that the program isn’t an automatic cure. “I was kicked out of the program in the first month,” he says.

Even kicking drugs didn’t make Morales’ world better. “Take away the drugs and you have a person with a lot of problems,” Morales says. “All of the sudden there are hang-ups and insecurities and hatred. But then you find out, hey, there are a lot of hidden talents here, too.”

“Duke of Earl II,” sponsored by Victory Outreach of the San Fernando Valley, plays tonight at El Mesias United Methodist Church, 9989 Laurel Canyon Blvd., Pacoima. Admission is free. Call (818) 768-5495.