A Pearl in the Rough : Venice Theater Gives Troubled Neighborhood a Stage to Air Issues, Win Respect

The sudden violence was all too typical for hot Westside nights. Shoreline Crips, wearing trademark blue bandannas and trench coats, were stomping and beating their rivals with lethal precision.

Blood erupted from shattered mouths. An onlooker shouted, “Stop it!”

The gang members were performing in a play entitled “Boredom” in an auditorium at Santa Monica Hospital. The realistic blood was courtesy of the show’s sponsor, actor Beau Bridges, who watched the action along with an audience of students, police, doctors, social workers, nurses and, in the auditorium’s last row, the Rolling 60s--deadly foes of the Shoreline Crips.

The Rolling 60s did not applaud. Instead, their hands came together in gang signs, challenging the on-stage Crips to real combat. But the performers ignored the challenge and improvised a rap dance in response to the taunts.

“Instantaneously, they turned the anger into music and dance,” said director Melvyn Hayward. “I was never so proud of anything in my life.”

“One time!”

On a recent evening, this warning cry, street slang for police, alerted a cluster of crack dealers and users to flee an alley off Washington Boulevard in Venice. A squad car glided by, and those who fled soon returned. Music echoed faintly from the Venice Teen Post. At the nearby Pearl White Theatre for the Performing Arts, a storefront on Westminster Avenue, two 13-year-olds--David Boyd and Sean Jones--parked their bicycles and called out to Hayward.

“Melvyn!? Can we bring our bikes in?”

Hayward, co-director of the theater where Venice youth are encouraged to write, sing, dance and act in productions based on their experiences, signaled for the teen-agers to come in. Then the burly 40-year-old, dressed in torn sweats, resumed his passionate explanation of how “Boredom,” which had been staged just a few weeks before in Santa Monica, was created.

“Our themes are community related: AIDS, drug abuse, curfew, ‘gang banging,’ the police. We always do them first for our community and our performances are always free. We rehearse three or four months. I know I take a lot from the kids, but then they give so much back to the community. And when the community sees them, people start feeling self-respect.”

During the course of an interview, Hayward used the word respect many times.

“People out there, they respect the Pearl White Theatre. They don’t smoke in here, they don’t drink in here, they don’t come in loaded.”

The Pearl White Theatre for the Performing Arts is an imposing title for the narrow, cluttered storefront on the edge of Venice’s Oakwood ghetto. The slab concrete floor is covered by two shag carpets. Third-hand furniture, sports trophies and photographs of Martin Luther King Jr. and Jesse Jackson help make it a home to local youth. The number of teen-agers who participate varies from production to production.

“We don’t have any money,” Hayward said. “Everything we got was donated. Here we are a theater group, and we don’t even have a camera. We pay for our own lights, plumbing. We got mismatched broken furniture. We use beat-up PA systems. No microphones. We don’t have anything. The only thing we have is us.”

Hayward and his actors rehearse in the storefront, but the plays are staged at various schools and institutions--Cal State Los Angeles, Venice High School, Santa Monica Hospital--that invite the company to perform.

Despite the unpretentious style and crude furnishings, the Pearl White Theatre is as accomplished as the average community theater. Hayward and his co-director, former gang member Robert Shipp, are creating a new play, “Youth by Police,” and preparing a performance for today’s sixth annual Venice Summer Arts & Crafts Festival.

The company, which is open to anyone who walks in off the street, even has a theatrical angel. Co-founder Beau Bridges, who attended Venice High School, donates equipment and rent money and attends performances. He also has acted in and directed company productions.

Bridges says he’s kept a low profile “because I wanted the young people to have a body of work that would speak for themselves. I’ve stayed away from public relations because I think young people, who are not aware of the media, can get swept away by it. I wanted it to be a community-oriented organization that could generate its own power.”

Said Hayward: “Beau don’t try to chump us. Beau is real. For a white dude he’s coldblooded dude. We call him Bo Diddley. He is real and he love us with his heart.”

Among the company’s “graduates” are Mark Booker, who appeared in “Colors,” and John Bay, who acted in “Weeds.”

“There is so much beautiful talent in this community,” Hayward said, “and I aim to find it and let it shine.”

During the day, Hayward works as a youth counselor at the Didi Hirsch Community Mental Health Center in Culver City. But he’s most eloquent about the Pearl White Theatre.

“We ain’t gonna ever use no professional actors,” he said. “In Venice we’re on a stage every day. We use what we got: ourselves. We get kids right out of the community who have had these things happen to them. And that way we get firsthand information.”

The productions are meant to be therapeutic and educational. For example, Hayward said, when a curfew was being enforced in Venice, many of the neighborhood children didn’t understand the law. Because some were raising themselves while avoiding drug-addicted parents, it made sense to stay out as late as possible. The streets, he said, were safer than home.

“So we did a skit on curfew with the Police Department,” Hayward said, adding that officers served as consultants to the production. “I even played one of the officers. This explained to the kids what it is the police are talking about when they say curfew.”

It also illustrated to the police why the children might disregard the curfew.

Capt. John Wilbanks, commander of the LAPD’s Pacific area, which takes in Venice, said that “generally the program is a real positive thing.”

Hayward says the Pearl White storefront space gives kids a place to “hang” besides Oakwood’s crack-dealing corner on 5th Street.

“This is a community, an extended family,” he said. “Everybody knows everybody.

“All you hear about on the radio and read in the newspapers is crime. But a lot of positive things happen here. Pearl White, that’s the most powerful person in Venice. I don’t care if you meet a million people, you ain’t met no one until you’ve met Pearl White.”

White, 70, is responsible for many community programs in Oakwood. While recovering from cancer in her mid-30s, White says she “dedicated myself to working for others. I guess I figured I didn’t have much time left.”

White helped organize Venice’s first Neighborhood Watch programs and met Hayward while working as a volunteer counselor at the Venice Drug Coalition. The theater that bears her name was started in 1978. (Hayward joined the group in 1982.)

White continues to work with the theater and, in fact, played the title role in a holiday play called “Merry Christmas Sarah,” saying: “They just put me in there even though I never had an acting lesson in my life.”

But White and her friends can’t get around as they once did, which is where Hayward comes in. “Melvyn is our legs--we can’t get around like Melvyn.”

Hayward “networks” the bureaucratic jungle as easily as he maneuvers the streets of Oakwood. He works with various organizations including the Los Angeles Police Commission and County Supervisor Deane Dana’s office. Marjorie Alatorre of the Venice Chamber of Commerce said: “Melvyn is trying to change the negative attitudes in the community. He’s extremely dedicated to saving our kids. He’s street smart and a very good role model.”

Hayward said: “You got to have a good relationship with the police. I work with all the people in the community. The police get mad cause I work with the ones they’re after, but somebody got to deal with them, somebody got to reach them before they either get killed or end up killing one of the police officers. When people give up on you in the Oakwood area, I’m always around.”

Pacing the rehearsal room, he turned to 13-year-old Sean Jones and said: “I’m telling you, Sean, you can do anything you want to do. You can follow the one that’s doing the wrong stuff or you can follow the right man. I always ran by myself.”

“I come in here because it’s somethin’ to do,” Sean said. “Sometimes we talk and sometimes we sit around and work on a play. Now we’re working on a gang play and a play about jobs.”

Hayward grins and says: “I’m a big 40-year-old kid. The Lord guides my light. There seems to be a shield around me. People trust me, that’s the key. I don’t try to tell them how to run their life. I try to help them when they’re at their lowest point. That’s what you should do--help a man when he’s down.”