Not just child’s play

TRAPPED in a sealed art gallery, with their air supply running low, a group of desperate strangers clashes, bonds and exchanges intimate confidences about the nature of art and the evanescence of life while waiting for rescue -- or death.

The scene is from the Silverlake Children’s Theatre Group’s new production, “The Window.” Yes, you read right. Children’s theater group.

“Barney on Ice” this is not.

Children’s theater is not just for children anymore. Increasingly, the genre has expanded into the realm of “youth theater,” issues-oriented fare geared to all ages, with a specific emphasis on adolescents.

“There’s no such thing as a youth painting,” says Corey Madden, producing director of P.L.A.Y., the youth theater program of the Center Theatre Group in downtown L.A. “You don’t show a child a shorter, easier-to-understand, educationally appropriate Picasso. ‘Youth’ does not mean ‘second class.’ ”

In Southern California, a select group of dedicated practitioners is helping to advance the transformation. At the 24th Street Theatre near USC, directors Jay McAdams and Deborah Devine recruit established adult performance artists of a distinctly avant-garde stripe for their youth-oriented Saturday Explorer Series. In Burbank, the master parodists in the Troubadour Theater Company don’t just offer naughty plays with an “adults-only” caveat but also gleefully gross family fare.

But perhaps the unlikeliest venue for a youth play is the Edge of the World Festival, an 18-day showcase for adventurous, sometimes controversial fare that starts tonight. Edgefest shows such as “Slut,” a comedy set in a brothel, are labeled off limits to kids for obvious reasons. However, Edgefest’s four-show Future Project, scheduled for Oct. 15, is designed to lure younger audiences, from elementary school age to older teens, into the theater.

“What has traditionally been presented as children’s theater does not appeal to a huge section of kids these days,” says Janis Hashe, the Future Project’s producer. “They’re far more sophisticated now. You can’t just drag out the bedraggled bunny suit anymore. You have to start thinking in a more progressive way.”

Just how do you hook a Nintendo-obsessed generation on the theater habit? It’s a question that increasingly preoccupies some of the edgier and more sophisticated theater artists in the country, including playwrights David Henry Hwang, Nilo Cruz and Jeffery Hatcher. And if unanswered, it may have lingering consequences.

“If we don’t reinvent the whole concept of theater for younger audiences, then theater is going to die,” Hashe says. “We need young blood coming into the theaters. Not that we don’t love the 75-year-olds. But when they move on to their reward, who is going to replace them in those seats?”

Apart from the troubling demographics, the bigger issue, Hashe and others say, is the role that the arts can play in young people’s lives.

“Theater develops lifelong learners,” says Peter C. Brosius, artistic director of the Children’s Theatre Company of Minneapolis. “In theater, you don’t just show up. Even if you’re simply an audience member, you’re harnessing your curiosity.”

An old colleague of Madden, Brosius got his stripes working for the Center Theatre Group’s Improvisational Theatre Project, the youth-oriented forerunner of the P.L.A.Y. series. In recent years, he has seen cities such as Dallas and Seattle devote resources to present professional children’s theater. He has seen his Minneapolis troupe win a regional theater Tony in 2003 -- an unprecedented award for a youth theater troupe, a clear indication that children’s theater is finally coming of age. But Brosius also believes that American youth theater still has a long way to go.

“With a few exceptions, I just don’t think that the American theater is paying attention to young people,” Brosius says. “What really inspired me to get into the youth theater field was the incredible work I have seen in Europe over the years. In Berlin, I saw teens in black jackets lining up around the block to see a show. We in America have to create that same kind of enthusiasm for our young audiences.”

IN 2003, Edgefest established its Future Project program, an attempt to shift the idea of “children’s theater” from visions of adorable moppets jockeying for center stage in “Annie” or adults dressed as witches, princes and bears in a Brothers Grimm fairy tale.

This year, producer Hashe has cast her net wide, actively soliciting local theaters to present their ideas for new youth shows.

Of the four theaters represented, only one -- the Silverlake Children’s Theatre Group -- is specifically a youth theater. The other three -- the MET, the Zoo District and the Towne Street Theatre -- are all established theaters whose patron bases consist primarily of adults.

As such, most of the actors involved are adults rather than kids -- a fact that Hashe says is an important step toward increasing the sophistication of youth theater.

“We at Edgefest feel that recruiting adult artists is a vital outreach,” Hashe says. “We’re not asking them to do ‘Peter Rabbit.’ We just ask them to think about what their theater does that reflects their artistic mandate but could also be appropriate for younger audiences.”

Geared to all ages, the Future Project shows are diverse in subject matter and tone. The MET’s “Amelia Learns to Fly” focuses on the life of Amelia Earhart, with an emphasis on the social pressures she faced as a woman in a pre-feminist society. Casting back a few thousand years, the Zoo District’s “The BoyKing” examines the life of King Tutankhamun, the Egyptian ruler who ascended to power at age 9. “Bad Bobbi Bolingo & the Dinosaur Cave,” the Towne Street offering, is an offbeat fantasy about a naughty little girl magically transported to a land of dinosaurs. And “The Window,” presented by the Silverlake Children’s Theatre Group, concerns tourists stranded in an art gallery who must make painful decisions concerning the relative values of art and human life.

L. Flint Esquerra, the writer-director of “Amelia” and artistic director of the MET since December 2004, felt drawn to Earhart after seeing her statue at the North Hollywood branch of the Los Angeles Public Library. He immediately envisioned Earhart’s story as a natural for a kids’ show but with a thought-provoking take on her as a feminist role model.

“The idea for the play had already been germinating for four or five years when I applied to the Future Project,” Esquerra says. “The primary thing that made the story compelling for me is that it has a really strong female role model. It’s amazing, the societal limitations that Amelia Earhart overcame through her own personal strength and courage.”

Under his tenure, Esquerra intends to open up the MET’s roster to shows that are appropriate for youth audiences. “We’ve done some kid-friendly shows at the MET in the past,” he says, “but I want to do more youth programming in the future. I don’t have kids myself, but I’ve always worked with kids.... Theater can have a very positive effect on young minds. I’ve seen that in my work.”

A classically trained dancer, Brian Frette, the writer, director and choreographer of “BoyKing,” has also worked extensively with children, helming movement workshops for urban youngsters. Frette became involved with the Zoo District eight years ago, primarily as a choreographer on such mature fare as the Faustian “The Master and Margarita” and the vampire tale “Nosferatu.”

Always fascinated with King Tut, Frette was thrilled that his Future Project play would dovetail with the Tut exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Yet along with the obvious educational opportunities, he feels that the show will strike an emotional chord with young audiences.

“Basically, Tut’s father was killed when he was 9,” Frette says. “So he had to become king when he had lost the great male role model of his life. I thought that might resonate with some of today’s children, who are also dealing with the loss of a father for various reasons, and who are trying to make the right decisions, develop judgment, and grow up to be strong men and women in fatherless households.

“How do you determine what’s right? Who’s going to show you? Tut was a king and he had a network of advisors around him. A lot of children in today’s society don’t have that kind of guidance and leadership.”

Writer-director Tony Robinson strikes a lighter note in “Bad Bobbi,” which Robinson originally wrote as a children’s book 18 years ago for his toddler son. A jovial man with his roots in stand-up comedy, Robinson describes his play as “The Wizard of Oz” meets “Jurassic Park” meets “The Bad Seed.”

“It’s a fantasy about a little bad girl named Bobbi who is swept away into a land ruled by dinosaurs,” Robinson says. “There’s a myriad of eccentric characters that she encounters, like Mel, an ‘In-Betweener’ who is a cross between human and animal, male and female. He’s just basically androgynous across the board.”

Whimsicality aside, Robinson makes no bones about his intended moral message. “The show’s didactic as hell,” he says. “It’s preachy. I think part of the problem with our society and our culture is that adults have abdicated their responsibility to preach at children.

“I deliberately geared ‘Bad Bobbi’ for elementary school kids, because I wanted to catch them at a formative stage, to teach them personal responsibility and consequences. The show’s a fantasy, but it’s very in-your-face with its morality. For me, it’s not so much about artistic expression. I’m just trying to keep a kid from shooting another kid in the head in 10 years.”

SCREENWRITER Broderick Miller, the writer-director of “The Window,” says he “slipped through the cracks” into the theater when his two daughters got involved with the Silverlake Children’s Theatre Group. After co-writing one of the theater’s shows, Broderick eventually took over the artistic leadership of the company in 2001. Over the last half-dozen years, it has garnered local renown for its intellectually challenging productions.

Although the plays are performed by minors, the troupe deals with thoroughly adult issues. “Buy America,” a recent original production, was a musical satire about the ravages of big warehouse stores on American communities. Phoebe Minette, Miller’s co-writer on that show, is a Marshall High School student who extols Miller’s influence on the group.

“Broderick likes to challenge us to do plays that are special for us,” Minette says. “We do original material that really has meaning in our lives.”

Among the troupe’s past productions are “Cheyenne,” a gender-bending musical western, and “Attack of the Killer Kids,” a comedic satire on the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

“Yes, we’re exploring themes and issues that are difficult, that are relevant to young people’s lives,” Miller says. “These kids have radar. They immediately know when they’re being condescended to. They’re still discovering themselves -- how they relate to the world and how the world relates to them.

“I put on my Kevlar every year,” Miller adds, “because we get flak from parents who question whether their kids are mature enough to explore these issues. But I also get e-mails from parents who say that this experience has changed their children’s lives. The theater provides a friendship network, a camaraderie, that is life-changing. These kids have issues. Every single one of them, really. Personal conflict with parents, school, friends, peer pressure.

“I think by tackling these issues in a creative way, it helps relieve their bottled-up frustrations. If this experience has taught me anything, it’s that kids are so much smarter than we think they are.”

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F. Kathleen Foley, a theater reviewer for The Times, can be reached at weekend@latimes.com.

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Edgefest’s Future Project

Where: Los Angeles Theatre Center, Theatre 3, 514 S. Spring St., downtown L.A.

When: Oct. 15

Show times: “Bad Bobbi Bolingo & the Dinosaur Cave,” 10 a.m.; “Amelia Learns to Fly,” 11:15 a.m.; “The Window,” 12:30 p.m.; “The BoyKing,” 1:45 p.m.

Price: Free

Info: (310) 281-7920, www.edgefest.org