Reliving the Drama of Everyday Life

To get a quick feel for “The News: A Living Newspaper,” an original classroom production at Portola Middle School, imagine “Our Town” with two narrators instead of one, sitting in metal folding chairs that flank the stage.

Thornton Wilder’s Stage Manager seemed to know everything about everybody. Teacher Paul Richardson’s narrators just know what they read in the newspaper. They take turns setting the scene.

“Inglewood, a neighborhood in the downtown area of Los Angeles.”

“Yellow police tape is wound tightly around a light pole as an official notice. This is the spot where 2-year-old Thomas Delgado died.”

“Two days after the shooting, a tangled group of blue balloons on a white ribbon appeared on the post. A card was tied to the ribbon with only one sentence on it.”

Twelve-year-old Stephen Wade, blue balloon in hand, was standing center stage, reading the card: “Way too many children have been killed.”

So begins one of the 11 skits--some dramatic, some comic--inspired by stories lifted from local newspapers. “The News” is being performed this week by Richardson’s four drama classes before 1,800 classmates and hundreds of parents at the Tarzana campus.

This critic attended a Period 2 performance on Tuesday and left impressed. The show, as it happened, resonated the next morning when this headline greeted Our Town:

Boy, 7, Added to Deadly

Toll of Assault Weapons

“My students told me about that,” Richardson said Wednesday during a break between performances. “Their parents get the paper and they’re looking at it now. They said, ‘Oh, did you see another kid got shot in South-Central?’

“They’re keeping up with the paper. That’s the whole idea: To get them interested in what’s going on.”

Actually, 7-year-old Evan Foster, described as a “sweet boy,” was slain in Inglewood, which is not that close to downtown or South-Central. The geographical vagaries, however, may be forgiven as long as the larger moral is understood--that way too many children have been killed.

Not everything in “The News” is so bleak, because news, like art, imitates life. The play opens with a humorous vignette based on an Ann Landers column, and comedic interludes are provided by such stories as “Man Punches Rooster.”

Richardson, who is in his third year of teaching after several years in regional theater and low-budget movies, conceived the play as part of a campus-wide campaign to encourage reading.

“The News,” both as a classroom assignment and a play, serves several purposes. Weaning children from MTV and Nintendo to real-world concerns is an admirable goal. Richardson says he tried to craft the script to deliver an anti-gang message without the preaching or lecturing that can be easily tuned out.

“They watch music videos in which gang violence is portrayed as something very romantic, very glamorous,” the teacher said. “The News,” he says, emphasizes the victims’ stories, with dialogue adapted from news accounts. And as one of the Readers explains, “Dragnet”-style, the names were changed “to protect the innocent.”

The play’s emotional impact, and its anti-gang message, are carried in four vignettes. And as in “Our Town,” the dead sometimes speak.

The skit “Death by Fire” tells of a Mexican immigrant who was beaten and set afire by gang members outside a 7-Eleven in San Fernando. Later comes “Wrong Turn Death,” based on the sadly memorable story of the 3-year-old murdered in an ambush on a car that turned the wrong way into gang turf.

This sets the stage for “Way Too Many Children Have Been Killed.” The hope of redemption, finally, is put forward in “Born, Reborn,” based on the story of a teenager who abandoned gang life to provide a brighter future for his newborn daughter.

Woven from several news accounts, “Way Too Many Children Have Been Killed” is the most complex skit and the dramatic high point. As the boy holds the balloon at stage center, other cast members step in from stage right and stage left.

In the performance I saw, Stephen Wade was joined by Derek Domike, Jesse Sander, Quantisha Garrett, Amanda Vasquez, Eido Lahiji, Max Besbris, Cory Tessier, Wendy Segovia and Jenette Kim. They played parents, witnesses, newspaper readers, and toward the end, the dialogue flowed like tears of grief.

“My 9-year-old son died right in front of me. He was everything to me.”

“I saw the dead child and the father bent over it crying. I couldn’t stand to look.”

“By the time I turned around, my 2-year-old son lay dead on the sidewalk.”

“Local elementary schools practice shooting drills to try to save children from gang bullets.”

“The woman screamed, ‘Oh, my baby!’ and started crying. She picked him up and was all covered with his blood.”

“One more cute, smiling face in the newspaper, one more child dead.”

“It seems like it will end. But it keeps going, night after night. It just keeps going.”

“Way too many children have been killed.”

The performers took their bows after each story and the student audience responded appreciatively. This was, Richarson told me later, “a pretty typical” performance, with the smattering of glitches understandable among young thespians.

Afterward, seventh-graders Jonathan Jackson and Arturo DeSantiago, who portray gang members convicted of murder in “Wrong Turn Death,” told me they’d never heard about that horrible crime before they started rehearsals. Children, of course, are often sheltered from news that is the stuff of nightmares.

“The News” should earn bravos from parents. Any who find it a bit strong might be pleased by the way half a dozen cast members reacted when I asked them to name their favorite skit. The vote was quick and unanimous. They loved the one about the Brinks truck that crashes on an overpass, littering the road below with a million bucks.

If only money really fell from the sky.

If only children would live to see the day.

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Scott Harris’ column appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays. Readers may write to him at The Times’ Valley Edition, 20000 Prairie St., Chatsworth 91311, or via e-mail at scott.harris@latimes.com Please include a phone number.