Losing a Trouper

Brandon Gentry should be singing and dancing with Fagin’s boys in the Young Artists Ensemble production of “Oliver!” that opens here tonight.

But midway through the two months of rehearsals, the 12-year-old Camarillo youth was struck by a car while skateboarding without a helmet. He died six days later.

His death left a hole far larger than the mere departure of a chorus member in the musical adaptation of the Charles Dickens’ novel.

Still grieving, the cast has decided to dedicate the entire run of the play at the Conejo Valley Adult School to Brandon’s memory, a gesture that means a great deal to his mother, Pam Johnson.

“It’s wonderful,” she said. “I dream about him every single night,” she added. “It’s just hard. I just feel like there’s that void.”

The void also has been felt by Brandon’s cast members on many levels.

Small for his age, Brandon had boundless energy and was fond of drawing and skateboarding. He had been cast as a member of the gang of pickpockets led by the rascally Fagin.

“He has this face,” said the play’s director, Georgeanne Lees. “He looked like a Fagin’s kid.”

“He was really cute,” said cast member Chelain Goodman, 12, an eighth-grader at Los Cerritos Intermediate School. She had taken Brandon under her wing, determined to teach him his dances. “There was his innocence and his zest for life,” she added.

Compounding the loss of a friend was that almost no one in the cast had ever known anyone who had died. Then there was the unique closeness of being part of a play itself.

When young people put on a play, especially a musical that requires substantial rehearsal, they frequently bond and become close.

“Things are amplified,” said Bob Pryor, the father of one of the cast members and a high school attendance counselor in the San Fernando Valley.

The father of cast member Megan Pryor, 15, who plays the Artful Dodger, Pryor has also been a teenage grief counselor at Birmingham High in Van Nuys.

“The closeness, the intimacy of drama, it provides a glue,” he said. “So when they lose somebody, their loss is much more significant. On the other hand, these kids that are so close are there for each other.”

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Brandon’s accident was Nov. 1. Director Lees was stunned when producer Scott Buchanan called her with the news the next day. “I knew from Scott that [the accident] was very devastating,” Lees said.

She told the cast at the beginning of the rehearsal, not at all sure what she was going to say. “They were all gathered. You just say it. It was as bad as it could be.”

Over the next few days, she kept the cast informed of how Brandon was doing, even as his condition worsened. Some visited him in the hospital, as Lees did. Everyone signed cards, and the group made a huge banner.

“You have to get better You wouldn’t want our rehearsals [to] get boring would you,” read Bryan Whitten’s unpunctuated wish.

The cast was prepared for Brandon’s death, but it was still hard to take. Pryor counseled the cast. He said the kids cried and held each other and talked about their feelings.

“In many ways, they did what we all should do,” he said.

Brandon’s death also inspired several cast members to vow that they will always wear helmets when skateboarding, roller-blading or bicycling.

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That is one of Pam Johnson’s hopes.

She said she would try to get legislation passed in Brandon’s memory requiring children to wear helmets while skateboarding, just as they must when biking. Brandon’s organs were also donated, and his mother said that at last count seven lives have been saved as a result.

The cast seems to be past the disabling part of the pain and is concentrating on the show. “I’m, like, doing as good as I can do to make it a great show,” Bryan said. But the hole remains.

“It’s hard to look at the stage and not see him there,” Lees said. She paused. “I don’t think I’ll ever do this play again.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

FYI

“Oliver!” starts tonight at 7:30 p.m. at the Conejo Valley Adult School, 1025 Old Farm Road, Thousand Oaks. It will run Fridays at 7:30 p.m., Saturdays at 2 and 7:30 p.m., and Sundays at 2 p.m., through Dec. 21. Tickets are $7. For tickets and information, call 381-2747.