Teens Turn History Into Stage Drama

Gabriel Jimenez-Torres, a 13-year-old middle school student and basketball fanatic, knew little about Rodney G. King before last October.

In fact, he searched Google Images to get a look at King’s face.

“I had to do a lot of research,” said Gabriel, who hadn’t been born when King was beaten in 1991 by four white Los Angeles Police Department officers whose acquittals led to riots in 1992.

But six months into classes with the California Institute of the Arts’ Community Arts Partnership theater program at Plaza de la Raza in Lincoln Park, Gabriel is almost an expert on King and that divisive time in the city’s history.

The program’s crew of about 30 middle and high school students, mostly from East Los Angeles, created the play “UPSET!” -- a work examining the notion of justice through the lives of historical figures, including King.

The play opens to the public today.

Plaza de la Raza, a Latino cultural center, has worked with the partnership since 1990. It offers students 40 weeks of free instruction in areas such as acting, voice, set design and sound design.

The program has a $145,000 annual budget that pays for instruction, sets, costumes and music. CalArts funds about 10% to 20% of the budget, and its Community Arts Partnership raises the rest through foundations, local and federal government sources, and individuals.

The program’s previous plays have embraced Latino themes, but “UPSET!” changed course by examining American civil rights through a politically charged form of theater developed by Brazilian playwright Augusto Boal.

“It’s completely different from anything we’ve done,” said Glenna Avila, director of the CalArts Community Arts Partnership. “We’re talking about a broader community -- not just the Latino community -- and that’s going to make a huge difference.”

The students started their theatrical journey last fall in workshops with CalArts professor and Boal expert Mady Schutzman.

“The very, very first thing I did was ask the students at Plaza to come up with a list of who they might want to study and celebrate,” she said. “They came up with a very long list.”

Names of political and artistic heavyweights had popped up during brainstorming sessions: Rosa Parks, Che Guevara, Frida Kahlo and Malcolm X.

But the mostly Latino students decided they wanted to tackle something new.

“All the other ones were boring. Rosa Parks -- I was like I already know a lot about her; I don’t want to do that,” said Gabriel, a seventh-grader at Eastmont Intermediate School in Montebello.

The students found African American Claudette Colvin fascinating because of the teenager’s unrecognized role in the civil rights movement four decades ago. In 1955, the 15-year-old Colvin refused to move from the white section of a bus in Montgomery, Ala., predating Rosa Parks’ similar civil disobedience.

Students learned that Colvin’s age -- the same as many of them -- and her teenage pregnancy by an older man made her an unsympathetic face for the civil rights movement.

“In this play, she’s trying to show how much she did at first. She’s trying to get some honor,” said Nathalie Watts, a 15-year-old who attends Bravo Medical Magnet High School.

But Rodney King? Theater staffers couldn’t hide their surprise when the cast voted to make him a centerpiece in the play.

“Quite honestly, we were horrified,” said Donald Amerson, Plaza de la Raza’s production manager. “We were like, how are we going to do a play about Rodney King?”

Many students had heard King’s name but knew little about him. They had vague notions that he was somehow involved in the 1992 riots in Los Angeles.

“We were 3 or 4 when it happened,” said Natalie Estrada, a 17-year-old from El Sereno. “I knew who he was, but I’d never seen the beating before.”

Several of her fellow cast members viewed the beating video for the first time when they joined the Community Arts Partnership theater class. Its shock value remained, even after 14 years.

But after learning more about King’s life, many program members held little respect for their main character.

“He’s not really a person you can really sympathize with. He’s not that good of a person,” said Camilo Quiroz, 17, after describing King’s criminal history.

Schutzman struggled at first to craft a coherent play focusing on such disparate characters.

“I didn’t have a clue how the two would work in the same play,” she said.

But after she ran workshops with the students, the script started coming together. Schutzman synthesized the two characters’ lives; in one scene, for example, Colvin plays a court reporter during the trial of the LAPD officers accused of beating King.

Schutzman also integrated questions the students had posed in their classes. During a scene in which Colvin resists orders to move from the white section of a city bus, for example, characters ask a litany of questions:

Claudette, why don’t you listen?

Claudette, are you going to let them walk all over you?

Why doesn’t anyone help her?

Black masks, why don’t you all get together and jump the white people?

More than a performance, “UPSET!” has become a thought-provoking history lesson for its student actors and stagehands.

“The L.A. riots -- I knew they happened but I never knew what actually happened to the people, what made them feel that way, to go out and riot,” Natalie said. “It’s amazing, and I can’t believe that something like that would happen.”

For director B.J. Dodge, the learning process has only helped the performance.

“They have no dog in that fight. They perceive racism, they perceive their own prejudice against people of other groups, and they can see what’s changed and what hasn’t changed,” Dodge said.

The play is “about what you give your community in the way of remembrance. It’s an homage to the facts that they lived through and to your city too,” she said. “It’s to L.A.”

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For free tickets or more information, call Plaza de la Raza at (323) 223-2475 or the Roy and Edna Disney CalArts Theater at (213) 237-2800.