‘I knew the biggest challenge would be to teach them to trust each other.’--Sally Gordon : Gang Members Get Lessons in Living in Camp Acting Class

As serene music wafted through the gymnasium, the teen-age actors began their improvisations as sea creatures and their blind offspring.

Some scrambled along the floor clutching their colleagues, picking up imaginary food and feeding it to them. Others circled gracefully around the room like fish, holding tightly to partners to keep them from banging into walls or stumbling.

That the young thespians are showing such creativity is exciting to Sally Gordon, who has taught drama for 20 years. But what continues to amaze her day after day is that they are willing to interact with each other at all.

For it has been only recently that these kids were interacting in a terrifyingly different way--going at each other with knives, guns and fists in the city’s mean and deadly gang wars. But here in the Angeles Crest Forest at Camp Karl Holton, the county’s highest security probation camp, the system’s most difficult juvenile felons are learning to develop their sensitive and creative sides.

Pilot Program

Gordon, who created the pilot program for the probation camp’s high school, says that sometimes while watching her students perform, she finds it almost unbelievable that they are here for a variety of juvenile court offenses--drug sales, robberies, burglaries, drive-by shootings.

“I have been very moved by them,” said Gordon, who is director of Firebird Theater Company, which received a grant from the Los Angeles City Cultural Affairs Department to try the workshop this summer.

The 20 students were chosen for the class by camp officials after they volunteered that they were interested in the activity. But getting the former rivals to leave their gang affiliations behind “didn’t happened overnight,” Gordon said.

At the first class session, the juveniles slouched around the room, flashed sneers and gang signs at each other and were reluctant to participate.

When Gordon brought out a large rack of clothes to be used for costumes, anything red and blue--colors of Blood and Crips gangs--went first. They tied scarfs around their heads and dangled them from their back pockets to signal gang affiliations.

A Safe Place

But Gordon and her two assistants, actresses Andrea Iaderosa and Violette Winge, kept emphasizing that the class was a safe place, a place where they could leave the gang-banging outside and not be laughed at or hurt.

The class is monitored at all times by a probation officer, but there have been no reports of physical confrontations among the actors. “They are expected to act like gentlemen and scholars at all times on campus, the class is no exception,” said Sue Thomsen, principal of the camp’s high school.

“I knew the biggest challenge would be to teach them to trust each other,” said Gordon, explaining why she could not start in with full-blown dramatic presentations. Instead, the students were flung into improvisational work in which they had to depend on each other.

Eventually, most dropped “their tough-guy roles” and pretended to be floating balloons, South American villagers, royalty living on the moon. They were encouraged to write poetry and draw pictures to illustrate their roles.

“A lot of these kids never had childhoods, never played pretend. It was a whole new world to them,” Gordon said.

Crying Sea Creature

After one ocean skit, 17-year-old Rubin, who was convicted of armed robbery and selling drugs, drew a picture of a crying sea creature. “His mermaid left him forever, he was very sad,” he said.

“At first I felt dumb doing the stuff and the guys were making faces at each other. But now the home boys ignore the other gang-bangers. In here, I don’t mess with them and they don’t mess with me.”

The workshop ends this month, and Gordon has been searching unsuccessfully for additional grant money to keep the project going. While her two assistants have been paid, Gordon said, she has donated her own time to the project.

Gordon organized Firebird Theater Company 10 years ago to present innovative performances to children citywide. But recently she has focused on participatory workshops such as this one. She would also like to start a similar program for juveniles still on the streets if she can find donated space for classes.

Thomsen said school officials have been pleased with the program. “It gives these kids the opportunity to finally let go of some of that gang influence.”

One of the workshop’s students recently graduated from the camp high school and will attend a community college. “He told me he wanted to study acting because of what he had experienced here,” Gordon said. “It was a real thrill to hear that.”

But all are not success stories.

“When some of them have been touched profoundly, they back off,” Gordon said. “Some are so afraid of their feelings, to change, to believe the good stuff about themselves, they fear they can’t do it again.”

And she worries about what will happen after they are released from the probation camp. “Many of them don’t have anywhere to go except back to the old neighborhood. I just hope they will take some of this with them.”

On a recent day, the students were playing out the various milestones that fathers and sons go through in a lifetime, making up dialogue as they saw fit.

In one corner, William, a 16-year-old confessed burglar, was lying prostrate on the floor, pretending to be a father gasping his last breath. His “son” was played by Mario, a 16-year-old who in real life was arrested for assault and battery.

“Dad, you look pale, I love you Dad,” Mario cried convincingly. “Remember all those drug busts I didn’t get busted for because you were there? Now, I’ll get you flowers, and a preacher and the best church in town for your funeral.”

Then the classmates, still in character, wrote farewell letters. Mario’s letter to William said, in part, “Dad, remember the fun we had. That is a part of loving and caring.” William, in turn wrote to Mario, “My son, it is not easy to say goodby, it’s not easy to let you go.”

Later, the juvenile offenders sat in a circle and discussed their skits. William shyly volunteered, “I thought it must take a lot of responsibility to be a father and take care of kids from beginning to end.” Mario said that he liked the scene where he left home and he and William, his pretend dad, hugged. “I never done that before when I was home.”

He added that in another scene in which he was jailed and William became very distraught, it suddenly occured to him, “Is this what my parents went through when I was in jail?”