Thespians to Perform at Inauguration : Presidency: Festivities for Bill Clinton will include present and former Van Nuys High School students in an original skit about the L.A. riots.

At 18, Thomas Jung has journeyed outside of California only once--an automobile trip to Oregon with a buddy--and met only a few people of note--a stray handshake with actor Dustin Hoffman and singer Paula Abdul.

But in less than two weeks, the Granada Hills resident, along with 15 other past and present students from Van Nuys High School, will journey across the country to perform before, and possibly meet with, the man who will shortly become the most powerful person in the world, President-elect Bill Clinton.

“It probably won’t sink in until we’re on the plane heading for Washington, D.C.,” said a still-unbelieving Jung, who has never flown before.

He and his fellow travelers, thespians all, have been invited to the presidential inauguration to perform an original skit about the Los Angeles riots that they premiered before millions of television viewers last month. Patrick Davidson, a producer who worked on the telecast and who is organizing some of the inauguration festivities, came away so impressed that he asked the ensemble to give an encore in Washington.

“We were discovered, so to speak,” said Van Nuys High School drama instructor Robin Share, who wrote the seven-minute vignette for last month’s telecast. Produced and broadcast nationwide by the Disney Channel, the telecast honored Share as one of the country’s top three dozen teachers.

Entitled “One Day in L.A.,” Share’s sketch will be performed at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts as part of the “Presidential Inaugural Celebration for Youth,” an event that also features presentations by the Joffrey Ballet, the pop group Boyz II Men and other recording artists. Organizers have scheduled the fete for Jan. 19, the day before Clinton is formally sworn in as the nation’s 42nd chief executive.

Originally, Jan. 19 had been set aside for a reception for the future First Lady, officials said, but Hillary Rodham Clinton insisted that an event be held for children and young people.

“It was very important to Mrs. Clinton that there be events for children,” said Sheila Frazier of the Presidential Inaugural Committee. “She decided that she was not interested in having something for her, which is traditional. She wanted something done for children and youth.”

“One Day in L.A.” centers on the experiences of young people during last spring’s riots, including several of Share’s drama students who had just taken to the stage for their opening performance of the musical “Guys and Dolls” when the violence erupted.

The cast was forced to stop the show as parents yanked their children from the audience and as some of the actors--with no time even to remove their makeup--were ordered to catch buses waiting to take them home, a few of them in the heart of riot-ravaged neighborhoods. Several subsequent performances of the show had to be canceled.

Share, who has taught at the Van Nuys campus for nine years, listened closely to the stories recounted by students as they trickled back to school in the following days.

“I paid a lot of attention,” she said, “because at the very beginning it sounded like theater--like there was a play in it.”

In the skit--which the company rehearsed for the first time in weeks Thursday evening--the students find themselves in a variety of situations, experiencing a wide range of emotions, from fear to anger to defiance.

Jung, a recent graduate who now works as a photographer, is handed a gun by his fictional parents and told to guard the family store.

“I actually drew my inspiration from . . . a friend of the family’s--a man who is one of the nicest, quietest people I know,” he said. “He owns a small business within a swap meet in L.A., and during the course of the riots he had to use a gun to defend his business. That disturbed me a lot.

“It could have as easily been me or my own father defending a business,” said Jung, whose character ultimately declares his willingness to do anything to protect the family property.

The entire vignette culminates in a song, “Morning Glow,” from the musical “Pippin.” Student Rowena Roberts, 16, launches into the piece after a night spent watching the fires blazing outside her window.

“We sit looking at the sky. It’s so red and it seems to be getting brighter” from more intense flames, said Rowena, a junior who lives in Lake View Terrace. “But my mother turns to me and says, ‘I don’t think that’s fire--it’s the morning.’ ”

The upbeat ending embodies the optimistic outlook that the troupe wants to convey during its all-expenses-paid trip to the nation’s capital.

“Our message is that of hope, despite the fact that the people of L.A. tore their own city to pieces,” Jung said. “If you look at the cultural diversity of the group itself, we’re setting an example to let them know that people of different nationalities and cultures can get along and that they can produce something worthwhile--like this piece.

“It can be done, and the youth of L.A. is doing it.”