Juveniles Escape Own Crime Tales on Stage

They stood proud on their makeshift stage, 20 boys who had just finished performing in their first drama production. Raising their hands, they took one deep bow and for a brief moment soaked up the cheers and a standing ovation that the small audience had awarded.

And then the young actors exited stage right: single file with hands clasped behind their backs, walking through four locked gates, past a 22-foot wall topped with barbed wire and back into Unit K/L of Central Juvenile Hall near downtown Los Angeles.

What unfolded Saturday afternoon inside the shabby chapel of the detention facility was an unusual act of teamwork performed by a group of juveniles charged with crimes ranging from murder to assault to burglary. As they move through the juvenile justice system, they attend high school classes and go to court hearings. Those with good behavior get a chance to join a theater group.

Guided by professional writers, actors and producers with a small nonprofit group called the Unusual Suspects Theater Company, the boys both wrote and acted in the nine-scene play.

But this was no merry holiday performance.

Instead, they called their play “The School of Hard Knocks” and filled it with characters with street names like Blizzard, Cool Breeze, Tantrum and No Good.

The plot involved a bomb-toting student who threatens to blow up their dilapidated high school because of a dispute with two gang leaders who have threatened him.

In the end, the factions agree to “all get along.” The bomb-maker reveals that his device is a fake and that he pulled the prank to force people to unite and overcome a problem -- but not before extracting an agreement from the principal for new books, desks, hoops and waxed classroom floors.

Several of the boys said they signed up for the production to break the monotony of their rigid schedule and to take their minds off what obsesses them most: their next court hearing.

“We always got orders .... We got three minutes to shower, can only go to the bathroom when we are told. This was a way to get my mind off court,” said Edward, 16, who has been charged with burglary.

“Not murder, like me,” said another boy, listening in on the conversation.

Superior Court Judge Michael Nash, presiding judge of the Juvenile Court, issued a special order allowing for a limited waiver of confidentiality laws to allow guests to attend the play.

Under conditions of the order, the youths could not be identified. Also, officials prohibited the boys from discussing specifics of their cases.

About 30 people, mainly supporters of the theater group and detention facility staffers, attended. Guests passed through metal detectors, had their belongings searched and were escorted to their seats by security personnel. As the boys performed, several staff members constantly scanned the group, counting heads.

“I invited my mother and attorney,” one boy said. “I’m hoping they come tomorrow.”

A second 16-year-old Edward was bold enough to volunteer to play a girl cheerleader named Diamond, who in a subplot spurns a gang-member boyfriend for a poetry writer named Theo. Diamond, in her miniskirt uniform (with county-issued gray pants underneath) stuffed bra and wig, got big laughs during the show.

“It seems to keep my mind straight from all the negativity, relieves the stress about my case,” said Edward, who imitated a firing gun with his hand when he said he has been charged with “attempted 187,” the penal code number for murder.

Dion, 16, who helped write and played the lead character, Simon, the fake bomb-maker, said he wanted the play to have a positive message, despite the surroundings and his own circumstances.

“My case is going downhill,” he said of the charges against him: assault and making a terrorist threat. “You know when you’re here that society is rejecting you. But when we get out, we should have improved ourselves.”

In one scene, the characters complain to their principal about poor school conditions.

“We’re in a broke school, which means we are in a broke neighborhood. How are we supposed to even get our own [school] supplies?” a character named Tantrum said.

Volunteer Cindy Chupack, a writer and executive producer for HBO’s “Sex and the City,” said she coached the youths but did not rewrite their scripts. She has been volunteering twice a week since October. “We just can’t forget about them because they are locked up.... It’s easy to think of them as monsters, as not our kids, but they are our kids.”

Volunteer Lisa Lindstrom, who produced “Fried Green Tomatoes,” said she lends her time because “obviously, I believe in rehabilitation.” She said she represents the other side of the “lock-them-up-and-put-them-away” philosophy.

“I have found if you give them a chance to use their minds and work on something dignified as human beings, they can rise to that,” she said.

But the rough production that used a few battered chairs and homemade posters for props and was performed on the chapel altar, had been hit with last-minute turnovers. Friday, two players were inexplicably pulled from the production.

“We don’t’ know what happened,” said one volunteer. Most likely he got in a fight or some other kind of trouble, said a detention facility official.