From Street to Stage : Troubled Youths Bask in Footlights

What happens when you give 13 children with little or no exposure to theater a chance to rehearse and perform in a series of musicals?

“The children were terrified at first,” said Lurrine Burgess, who runs the Southern California Conservatory of Music in Sun Valley. “By the second quarter they were on pitch. By the third quarter, it was a whole new ballgame. Finally they had self-control and stage presence.”

Typically, a parent will pay $148 a quarter for a child to attend twice-weekly sessions at the conservatory and perform in a week of shows. But these 13 children attend classes through a special grant from the Hearst Foundation, designed to permit low-income children to participate in an after-school-enrichment program.

The children’s involvement with the conservatory, a nonprofit private music school for both professionals and serious amateurs, is a result of their participation in a Youth Under Christ program at First United Methodist Church in Van Nuys.

Last January, social worker Ruth Watkins asked Burgess about the possibility of a theater workshop for the children in the YUC program, and Burgess warmed to the idea immediately.

“I knew exactly what it would do for the children--what it does for all the children. That’s why I had to make it happen,” Burgess said.

She agreed to pay half the costs by doing a little fund raising on her own. After seeing the kids make progress in the first quarter, Burgess tapped her brother, an orthopedic surgeon in Seattle, to underwrite the second quarter.

The Hearst Foundation came through with enough money to carry the children through another four quarters (and Burgess hopes to renew it). The $7,000 grant pays for four 12-week quarters and allows the school to buy the materials for new costumes.

Burgess has worked with the same group of children for the duration of the program rather than offer it to new students each quarter. “It takes longer than 12 weeks to train voices. Ear tuning, a sense of timing--it takes a long time.” Productions have included “Robin Hood,” “The Emperor’s Nightingale” and “The Three Feathers.”

With 9 months left in the scholarship program, Burgess said, her work has been more than satisfying.

“These are kids whose stories would break your heart,” Burgess said. Last spring, before a long Saturday rehearsal, she told her charges to bring sack lunches. One of them arrived without a lunch, announced there wasn’t any food at home, and said he wasn’t hungry anyway.

“I scrounged around the refrigerator and found something for him to eat,” Burgess said. “He ate half a pound of Cheddar, a loaf of bread, and practically everything else I could find.”

These 13 children, Burgess said, are more independent and mature than most of her students. “They are 11 going on 40. They are more responsible. In their lives, they take care of themselves. Nobody picks up after them. They make their own meals, take care of their own hair and clothes.”

Last January the youngsters “were raw, raw, raw,” she continued. “They were tough street kids. They would poke fun at each other and jeer.” These days, they help each other dress and do everything possible to make each other look good on stage.

“Having to learn the scripts has made reading easier at school,” said Angela Bryant, 12, a seventh-grader at Van Nuys Junior High. “It’s made school a lot easier.”

In addition, the program is a safe haven. “I’m happy here,” said Joe Arden, a sixth-grader at San Jose Street Elementary School in Van Nuys, and the others nodded in agreement. “Nobody hates each other here like they do in school. We help each other.”

He added, “Mrs. Burgess listens to us. She doesn’t cut us off like teachers at school do. But she makes us disciplined too.”

“They have changed so much,” Burgess said. “Alfredo is beginning to take a role and make it real.”

“Even before I came here, my goal was to be an actor,” said 12-year-old Alfredo Palomarez, another seventh-grader at Van Nuys Junior High. And he has learned at least one of the tricks of the trade: conquering stage fright. “When I’m performing, I just pretend there’s a wall in front of me.”

Burgess said there are no prima donnas in the program because of her role-rotation system. Everyone learned all 13 roles in last quarter’s production, “The Three Feathers,” roles that range from the king to Toad No. 5.

In addition to learning the libretto and feeling good in fancy costumes, the children learn about life behind the lights. They double as stagehands, scurrying back and forth in the dark to remove chairs between scenes.

Said Burgess, “The productions are just a mechanism to teach them self-confidence, self-respect, how to work as a team, as well as theater. But don’t tell them that.”