WESTLAKE : Student Actors Make Art of Life

Clad from head to toe in black, the young gang leader cut a threatening figure as he waved his pistol frantically at his cowering homeboys.

“Give me my money!” he boomed at one youth. “You stole it!”

Taking aim at the accused boy, he fired. The boy crumpled into a heap.

Fortunately, this was not a real-life drama. The “gang members” were young actors, most of them students and recent graduates of Belmont High School. But their stage production, “Simon and the Extra-Terrestrials,” reflected the realities that many of them encounter every day in the surrounding Westlake neighborhood.

Belmont High has no theater department, but a Pasadena-based performing arts collective of playwrights and actors called Ta’yer took up residence at the school two months ago and recruited students for an on-campus acting workshop.

Their training culminated last weekend in several performances for students and parents in the school’s auditorium. English teacher Esther Bates, who directed the play, said it was such a success that she plans to take the young actors on the road throughout the Los Angeles Unified School District.

“I think the kids here were blown away,” Bates said last Sunday, after a final performance that was videotaped for students who could not attend the live performances. “It really hit home in this school. There are lots of kids here who have had friends or family killed as a result of gang violence.”

Written by playwright Fernando Castro, who founded the Ta’yer collective in 1989, “Simon and the Extra-Terrestrials” explores a day in the life of Simon, a talented but troubled young tagger who belongs to a gang called the Coyotes. The gang was founded by his uncle and named for a mythical creature that his deceased grandfather once spun tales about.

As disastrous events begin unfolding in Simon’s life--including the fatal shooting of a close friend--the mythical Coyote comes to life and begins putting Simon in touch with the spirit world so he can see beyond the gang’s destructive vision.

Ta’yer has taken its multiculturmal, bilingual traveling performance workshops to various schools in Los Angeles. Bates, who directs plays in her spare time, invited the group to provide a creative outlet for her students.

Most of the young cast members are amateurs, though a few are seasoned actors. One of those is Mario Larrazabal, 17, a senior at Bravo Medical Magnet in East Los Angeles who heard of the workshop through a friend at Belmont.

A native of Pico-Union, Larrazabal has been performing through the Downtown Inner City Arts center since eighth grade. He is studying medicine now, but hopes to switch to drama when he gets to college.

A full-fledged theater department for Belmont is still far away, Bates said, but the school will begin offering a regular drama class this fall.