It Pays to Play : Summer jobs: Inglewood program gives young performers from disadvantaged backgrounds a chance to strut their stuff.

I really need this job.

Please God, I need this job.

I’ve got to have this job. “A Chorus Line”

Ask the players in the city of Inglewood’s upcoming production of “A Chorus Line” about the Great White Way and you might as well be talking about Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills.

They have never been to the Music Center in downtown Los Angeles, let alone to Broadway. They are 34 low-income, inner-city youths working in what may be the most unusual summer jobs program in the Southland.

“I wanted to be a janitor,” said Frankie Smith Jr., a bantamweight 15-year-old who applied for the jobs program hoping he would be chosen to push a broom around.

Instead, he was cast in a principal role in the play. “I get to be somebody new,” the delighted teen-ager said.

The closest Juan Robledo, 17, ever came to a stage was when he thought about going to see “Phantom of the Opera” after overhearing some of his teachers talk about it. The idea died a quick death, though.

“The tickets were, like, $60,” he said.

Never mind that some members of this cast have been in trouble at school, that at least one started work while recovering from a bullet wound, that a fistfight broke out during one of the early rehearsals, or that gang logos and street names occasionally show up scribbled in the margins of the scripts.

In the cramped recreation center rooms that serve as their rehearsal halls, the youths are being taught to do what all successful actors must do: forge a family of players and get out of themselves.

“Last summer I was a clerk,” said 18-year-old Sherree Carey, who like the others is singing and dancing her heart out for $4.25 an hour in the jobs program. This summer, Carey is Sheila, an aggressive character in the play with enough “attitude” to move a mountain.

Sandy Lovelace, 17, has learned to see something of herself in the character she plays, Val, a woman who knows exactly what she wants and goes after it--even when it means silicone injections.

“I know what I want,” said Lovelace, who is determined to study nursing or computers at an area trade school this fall.

Val’s show-stopping vocal number, “Tits and Ass” in the original Broadway play, has been tactfully changed to “Boobs and Buns” for the Inglewood production, which will have four showings later this month.

Likewise, a reference in the script to Doris Day has been changed to Josephine Baker and a line about veteran Broadway dancer Gwen Verdon has been changed to refer to Debbie Allen to make the play more relevant to the audience.

To describe these virtually inexperienced players as raw talent would be an understatement.

“Nothing on it, no frills, brand spanking new, out-of-the box,” is the way the play’s director, Ruth Blake, a professional dancer and choreographer, describes the talent she must uncover or instill in each member of her cast.

“In eight weeks we have to develop self-esteem, ego projection, positive thinking, faith and hope,” said Blake, who has a local dance company of her own and is one of five professional show business people hired by the city to get the play into production.

“To get them to sing in front of people is a miracle, a miracle,” Blake added, recalling their initial stage fright.

Beyond what they have read in the script, the youths know little about “A Chorus Line,” how it forever changed the face of Broadway musical history, how it holds the record for the longest running show, how it made director-choreographer Michael Bennett a legend or how he died of AIDS at 44.

That is not to say, though, that they do not understand the leitmotif of the play, the feelings of rejection, desperation and, finally, triumph.

“I’m just hoping he’ll give me this job,” 15-year-old Melissa Lovelace said, describing how her character, Cassie, a failed actress, begs to be allowed to make a living back in the chorus line.

“He feels that he really needs to prove himself to everybody else,” Robledo said of his character. He plays Zach, the driven Broadway director who sacrifices everything to ambition, even Cassie’s love for him.

The people in the fictional chorus line, Robledo said, are “people with trauma in their lives.” Yes, Smith agreed, ticking off the list of traumas in his character’s life. Smith plays Paul, a drag queen who was molested as a boy and had to hide his homosexuality from his family.

The three young women in the cast who sing the song “Everything Is Beautiful at the Ballet” have never been to a ballet, but they know the meaning of the song.

“It’s a fantasy,” said Sherinder Butler, a 17-year-old who plays Maggie, one of the three girls who sing on stage about the part ballet played in their bleak, young lives.

Sherinder--she is quick to say that her own father did not leave her--explained that the fictional Maggie’s father walked out on her mother shortly after Maggie was born, which explains why as a child she would pretend her father was dancing with her.

Inglewood officials got the idea for the play from the city of Stockton, which uses some of its federal summer job dollars to pay disadvantaged youths to put on plays.

“The main purpose (of the play) is . . . to build the self-esteem and self-confidence of the kids,” said Nathan Kessman, who heads Inglewood’s cultural affairs office.

The total cost of the production is $77,000, $50,000 of that for the youths’ salaries for nine weeks. The money is contributed by the city and the South Bay Private Industry Council from their summer job funds.

“We’re really running this on a shoestring,” said Kessman, pointing out that Stockton’s budget was probably double that spent in Inglewood. “We’re hoping next year to get a little more funding.”

Funds are so tight that Blake is not sure she can find the money for such things as stage lighting and costumes, and cast members must also make sets and props. There are no stage lights in the school auditorium where the play will be presented. The cost to rent them is $5,000. There is enough money in the budget for the principals’ costumes but not for the rest of the cast, she said, even though all the script calls for is leotards and dance tights.

Blake and her staff, Kessman said, are putting a lot of unpaid time into the production, but Blake and her singing and dancing coaches are not complaining.

“I have the greatest job in the world,” Blake said, “because I see the growth.”

Performance Times

Four free performances of “A Chorus Line” will be presented: at 11 a.m., Aug. 25 and 27; and at 8 p.m., Aug. 28 and 29. All performances will be in the auditorium at Crozier Junior High School, 151 N. Grevillea Ave.

Reservations can be made by calling (310) 412-5508.