With Eyes to the Future : Young Players Use Theater as Tool for ‘Peace’

Lanky, blond Nathan Naddell, 15, lives in Simi Valley. Lauren Waite, a poised 12-year-old, is from South-Central. During the city’s recent turmoil, Nathan stayed at home, watching it on TV. Lauren stayed at home, terrified, while nearby buildings burned.

What could they have in common? More than either once thought.

In response to the recent civil unrest, they will join other children and teens--African-American, Asian-American, Latino and white--at the Shrine Auditorium on Friday in “Peace Child Los Angeles, 1992,” a musical plea for racial unity and understanding.

Mariette Hartley will be the show’s “storyteller.”

The show was in the planning stages “two days” after the unrest began, according to co-producer Janet Parmenter. “We knew we didn’t have time to waste. The children were the ones who were the most injured by this. They need to be part of the healing process.”

The production is an offshoot of Peace Child International, founded in the early 1980s to help ease nuclear tensions between the United States and the then-Soviet Union by bringing together children from both countries.

Since then, thousands of children around the world have participated in “Peace Child” plays, written by David Woollcombe and based on “The Peace Book” by Bernard Benson. Volunteers do the staging; the shows are adapted by using the words of local children to personalize conflicts.

The L.A. cast was chosen through auditions in schools in Simi Valley, Long Beach, South-Central and Greater Los Angeles. Parmenter and Stacey McEnnan are producing the event under the auspices of their nonprofit See Above Productions corporation.

“We wanted them to be able to sing,” Parmenter said, “but more important, we wanted to hear what they had to say about the situation in the city and in the country.”

What they heard--thoughts, fears, anger and advice--are woven into the play; the cast is made up of a core of about 40 principals and a chorus of 250, ages 7 to 18.

“I hope people take this seriously,” said Hartley, whose daughter is in the show’s chorus. “These kids have a message that needs to be heard, loud and clear.”

Lauren Waite hopes so, too. The discovery of “what people can actually do” still shocks the pony-tailed junior-high-school student. “The businesses around us were burned to the ground,” she said. “A lot of looting went on and it scared a lot of children.”

The show’s message, she said, is that “there’s a solution to a problem, not in a violent way, but in a peaceful way.” Disliking someone “because of nationality or background, that makes no sense. You should look at someone as a person, because they’re somebody .”

For Nathan the experience has been an eye-opener.

“Sitting at home in Simi Valley and watching all this stuff in L.A. on TV and then meeting kids who actually had to live through that--it’s more tangible now,” he said. “We should get together and fix the problems on this Earth before it’s too late.”

“Kids have a lot to say, more than most people think,” said Neal Shusterman, author of such young-adult novels as “Shadow Club” and “What Daddy Did,” who helped adapt the script.

He based scenes on what cast members said in discussions and improvisations. “One of the show’s purposes is to give kids a voice who normally feel that they don’t have one.”

One voice belongs to Kwasi Boyd, 14, street chic in dreadlocks and enormous, low-riding jeans. To him, the show is “pretty cool. It let me know how everybody felt.”

Juan Solorio, 15, from Pacoima, was struck by how the cast members, strangers from widely varied backgrounds, “don’t have nothing against each other. It’s not like that in the street. In the street . . . they don’t know how a person feels, that a person has feelings.”

“There are some rules about how far we can deviate from the original ‘Peace Child’ script,” said Michael Haney, the Los Angeles director who is staging the show. “And a certain number of songs we have to keep in.

“But the core idea of the show is empowerment of the kids. They look at what the problems are, about what causes racial disharmony--’poverty, education, people don’t care, people don’t listen.’ That will come out in the show.”

The cast’s problem-solving “resolutions” will be formally presented at the end of the show to Los Angeles City Councilman Richard Alatorre, author of the Los Angeles Children’s Policy, a “bill of rights” for the city’s children, established in 1991.

Net proceeds, if any, will go to Los Angeles children’s organizations. Major corporate support has been hard to come by, according to Parmenter, who said she refinanced her home in order to pay half of the Shrine’s $30,000 fee. The other half was paid by “an anonymous donor.” Super Shuttle and Laidlaw Transit Inc., however, have contributed thousands of dollars in free transportation for the young performers, while the unity-conscious Cross Colours clothing company is supplying the costumes.

“I’m glad there are so many people here wanting to participate in this,” said Van Nuys student Paul Sadler, 16, during a noisy, high-spirited rehearsal. “If there was more communication like this within the communities themselves, well, skin color would just be a skin-deep thing.”