A Capital Occasion for Teens : Gala: Thirty-two members of Pasadena’s Save Our Youth have been invited to perform at the kickoff event of the Clinton inaugural. Now they need some sponsors.

Early last year, with more good will than cash, a pair of actors decided to give troubled and at-risk youth a chance to find their voices--and their hearts--through a hands-on theater arts program that would reach out to the community.

The Pasadena-based Save Our Youth Arts & Education organization’s first show was “Graffiti Blues,” a rap opera about the plight of inner-city youth. It was hosted by Dionne Warwick at the Pasadena Civic Auditorium in November. Weeks later, the fledgling company, founded by Ron Mokwena (“A Different World” and the Broadway company of “Sarafina!”) and Misha McK (“Mrs. C. and Me”), is taking its “Blues” on the road.

Thirty-two members of the company have been invited to the nation’s capital to perform at “America’s Reunion on the Mall,” the kickoff event of the Clinton inaugural, Jan. 17 and 18. They will be part of a bill that includes Peter, Paul and Mary, the Winans, Los Lobos, Robert Cray and rock groups Blues Traveler and Little Feat.

The two-day event, free to the public, is planned as a mammoth festival of performances, arts and craft displays and carnival-type attractions. Save Our Youth will perform on the second day, Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday.

From inaugural headquarters in Washington, executive producer Ed Emerson said that the gala celebration, conceived by Hillary Clinton, would “highlight the cultural diversity and the wonderfully different aspects of American society and bring them under one tent, literally. We’re going to tent almost the entire length of the National Mall, adjacent to the Smithsonian Institution.

“What Save Our Youth does for us,” Emerson said, “is to show the aspect of hope in the inner city, of hope for the youth. I think it is probably one of the more dynamic and original programming aspects of this whole event. It’s new and fresh . . . and these are very creative people. This is what Bill Clinton is about.”

The inaugural committee will fly the Save Our Youth members to Washington and give them lodgings. In addition, as part of “our participatory package” for performers, Emerson said, “we’re going to try to offer them a chance to go to one of the (inaugural) balls.”

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To that end, McK and Mokwena are looking for sponsors to provide the young people with formal attire and to help with transportation and food for the group’s five-day stay in the capital.

“I’m like, excited! ‘Cause, I’m going to tell my kids about this, my grandkids!,” exclaimed 15-year-old Khalidah Kamal, when asked recently for her reaction to the news. Along with other Save Our Youth members, the Altadena ninth-grader had just finished performing an excerpt from “Graffiti Blues” at a local shelter home for teens.

Kamal, soft-spoken, with flawless brown skin and light brown eyes, said that being part of Save Our Youth was important to her, even before the big news. “I’m more sure of myself. I realize myself as an individual more.” One character she played in the show reminds her of the way “my mom tries to keep me away from all the bad elements that surround me.”

Aaron Stolchin, 20, hesitantly confided that he is “80% learning disabled,” crediting the program with improving his reading skills. He plays “Hiccup,” a boy who has a fatal confrontation with his abusive father.

Teo Hunter, tall and deep-voiced at 16, with hair cropped short, earned applause from the shelter teens playing Chaka, a street kid who found his only family when he joined a gang. “I’m fine, really,” Chaka’s tough monologue concludes. “I no longer cry.”

Going to Washington, Hunter said, “gives me a chance to kill the stereotypes, you know, to give the youth a voice. Because a lot of the stuff that people think, like they hear on the news, all they hear is the negative part.

“They don’t know where these troubled kids come from, and I’m being the voice for that.”

Hunter hopes to be able to ask President-elect Clinton to “invest in your youth.” He wants education to be the priority it is in other countries, “because, you know, the youth are going to be the future.”

(It is uncertain whether Clinton will see the performance, Emerson said. “We’re hoping that he or Mrs. Clinton or Sen. (Al) Gore and Mrs. Gore will be able to come by.”)

Tess, who prefers not to use her last name, played a homeless young woman named Rebecca who had been abused by her father. Before she delivered Rebecca’s impassioned monologue for the watching teens, Tess told them that she could relate to the character because she had had a “lot of problems at home.”

She didn’t tell them that she had also been homeless and in and out of shelters. Tess hopes the new President will see their show and feel “an awareness very deep in his gut . . . because we represent all youth, not just L.A.”

By having the group perform, Tess said, the President-elect is “making a big statement. It gives us hope. It gives us a chance to get involved in taking care of our own community. It’s spreading the word that we can speak up, that we can communicate with our families and stay together, not end up like Rebecca or Chaka.”

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She also has something to say to adults who decry rap. “It’s a beautiful thing, because we’re saying what’s going on right now and we’re expressing it there, we’re not expressing it by fighting or deciding who we’re going to shoot next.”

Mokwena and McK, a husband-and-wife team, are obviously pleased at the attention their company is getting--it was a CNN report on their November show that caught the attention of the inaugural entertainment committee, McK said. They even dare to hope that their combination of arts and community service for youth could become part of the new Administration’s national agenda.

“Caring about human beings,” Mokwena said. “That’s what it’s all about.”

“Once we can get the teen-agers to start valuing life and loving people,” McK added, “they’ll stop shooting each other.”

South African Mokwena’s empathy for youth in turmoil has especially deep roots. When he was 13, Mokwena was arrested for participating in the 1976 political student uprisings in Soweto. He has lived in exile since.