Acting Out Problems : Workshop Helps Young Offenders Use Energy Creatively

The 16-year-old folded the paper along its well-worn creases and began, in a voice perhaps more innocent than it should have been:

“I remember the first time I got locked up in the halls . . . .”

He froze, fumbled for his footing and admitted:

“I know it, but I can’t remember where it starts.”

Leaning toward his pupil, actor Roger Kern was reassuring, telling the boy to take it easy and start over.

“I remember when I first got locked up in the halls,” the boy began anew, in flat, even tones. “It was the feeling I had when I was in court and the judge said ‘detained.’ I thought nothing would ever hurt worse than that. I lost all hope.

“After that, everything was just time and waiting: weeks going by slow, waiting for Sundays when your parents would come visit; Sundays slipping by as if no one had come . . . .”

“That’s it,” Kern beamed.

The youth beamed back. But it took a little more practice before the fledgling actor was ready to appear before the camera to have his monologue taped.

The teen-ager had the time; he’s locked up at Kirby Center, a Los Angeles County Probation Department detention facility in the City of Commerce that houses nearly 100 boys and girls.

The video project involving the center’s drama class is the second of the California Youth Theatre’s attempts to harness youthful energy for artistic--and legal--ends. For 27 years, the theater group has been conducting summer workshops in the performing arts for youths. And last summer, the group started helping children who have run afoul of the law.

‘It’s Creative Energy’

“It’s creative energy, unguided or misguided, but creative energy,” said Kern, who recently ended a stint on the “Falcon Crest” TV series when his character was sent to prison. “We’re trying to tap back into it.

“I don’t know what’s going to happen when they get out. But I know for one instant I gave them something, showed them an alternative.”

Convicted prostitutes, rapists, child molesters, murderers, drug addicts, dope peddlers, from 13 to 18 years old, attend school within the center’s walls. The average stay is eight months before they are released to serve the rest of their sentences on probation.

Last summer, the theater group staged a six-week program at Kirby that culminated in a dance and drama production before the whole school. Called “Transitions,” the tapestry wove scenes from such diverse works as “Of Mice and Men” and “The Odd Couple” into a theme centered around shared experiences with pain.

“It really does make a difference,” said Barrie Becker, who has been a teacher at Kirby for 12 years.

One youth entered the summer drama workshop “very negative to the idea,” Becker recalled. “He learned to really love drama.”

An AIDS video the youth subsequently wrote, directed and produced at the center made it to the national finals in a PBS contest, she said.

Landed Job

After leaving Kirby recently, the 18-year-old landed a job with a clinic, doing educational productions.

Theater, Becker said, “gave him something to love, to look forward to.”

Not all is glory in the workshops. The youths also have to build the sets and do all of the other behind-the-scenes work.

“That’s part of show biz that no one sees,” artistic director Jack Nakano said. “Saw, saw, saw. Bang, bang, bang.”

The work is designed to instill in the youths a sense of accomplishment and potential.

“It’s a wonderful experience for the kids, just the recognition that people in the community care. It makes them feel important,” Becker said. “It’s a bridge. Most of them have come from these really sad, terrible, abusive backgrounds. It gives them something that will help them with whatever they do in life. It motivates them to learn more about themselves and to do more.”

The youth who read the story of his detention agreed: “It kind of makes you feel proud. You get a lot of feelings out.”

California Youth Theatre has kept many youths busy during the summer months.

It has also produced a Broadway actor, Howard McGillin; a dancer with the America Ballet Theatre, Ty Granaroli; two set designers who worked on the Conan and King Kong rides at Universal Studios; movie stars Eric Stoltz and Anthony Edwards, and a singer with New York’s Metropolitan Opera, Eduardo Villa, among many others working in the arts. It is hoped that some of the youthful offenders will follow in their footsteps.

Until 1980, the theater group was based in Santa Barbara, where founder Nakano earned a living as a high school drama teacher. Driven by the lure of corporate and industry money in Los Angeles, Nakano moved south. He says he was not expecting a flood, but the ensuing trickle still surprised him.

About $3,000 in federal funds for disadvantaged children are covering expenses for the workshop at Kirby, and at a second workshop at another facility in Bellflower, as well as Kern’s nominal salary.

That salary seems to be small compensation for the frustrations inherent in working within a tightly controlled environment, such as a prison.

Kern had wanted to do something at Kirby approximating a full-blown production, or at least tape around the campus with kids acting out their experiences. But it didn’t work out that way.

“I know Roger had to narrow his vision any number of times,” Becker sighed.

In the end, the kids simply read their scripts before video cameras.

Even that wasn’t easy. A week before shooting was to begin, Kern said an escape, in which one of his key players got away, prompted officials to restrict the youths to the auditorium.

Just getting the tape off the premises for editing required a great deal of cajoling on Kern’s part to convince officials who were worried about minor confidentiality laws. When the editing is completed in about a month, Kern said, he will give the tape to the school.

Pace Annex in Bellflower is a day center for emotionally disturbed and physically disabled youths. It is also a continuation school for children on probation who, after instruction, do court-ordered community service by helping the disabled and disturbed students.

The original plan, Kern recalled, was to do a production with the disabled students and the delinquents interacting.

But when the California Youth Theatre workshop got under way there more than a month ago, the youths were less than excited.

At first they stood, far apart, in the corners. Then most left. The first day of acting class at Pace was less than a smashing success.

Standing face to face, about two fists away from one another, doing facial exercises and mime did not appeal to most of the youths.

But by the second week, about half a dozen youths decided to give it a try. But that didn’t mean they were going to smile at, talk to, or look at each other.

“In the begining no one would touch each other,” Nakano said. “No one would do anything. . . . To get two gang members to look each other in the eye is no easy stuff.”

Kern had the students roll on the ground, jump up and down and shout--anything to break inhibitions.

“It’s been a very complicated process explaining to these kids what the craft of acting is,” Kern said. “A lot of time you can see it in their eyes, that they don’t have a clue as to what’s going on.”