Theater program reaches out to underserved students

(Photo: THERESA CHAVEZ)

For some, theater has a way of opening doors that they didn’t even know existed.

Alexis Benitez, a ninth grader at Marshall High School in Pasadena, California, has new goals after being a part of About…Productions’ Young Theaterworks program.

The program, which is in its 20th year, goes into the schools where the most at-risk students attend. As part of their classes—sometimes English, sometimes history, sometimes art, sometimes social studies, sometimes a combination of classes—they work with teaching artists to create work that matters to them.

When they had to go virtual this year, they started a project called “The Art of the Monologue.” During it, Benitez wrote a compelling monologue filled with beautiful detail about a wife and mother in Mexico who was being abused.

“Myself, my mother and grandparents are all from Mexico,” Benitez said. “I know all these stories of abuse that happened over there. I know it happens everywhere, so I wanted to write this as sort of an inspiration to help women who are unfortunately going through this. You are strong and no one can tell you what to do. You can find a way out and get to be happy and not afraid.”

While practicing for the class culmination performance, she asked her parents if they wanted to hear it.

“At first I didn’t think my monologue was so good, I didn’t believe in myself,” Benitez said. “I read it to my mom and dad and they really liked it. They said, this is something you can do in the future. I never even thought of being a writer or knew that I had the ability to write something like I did.”

And while acting holds little interest for her, she’s now turned on to the idea of being a writer.

Theresa Chavez, the artistic director of About…Productions, said that while they use theater games and theatrical storytelling, the program is really a literacy based program.

“The goal is to make them better communicators, collaborators and to improve their literacy practice, not necessarily to give them the opportunity to explore acting,” Chavez said.

Most of their students, she says, are those in the highest risk groups, or those called “educationally disadvantaged” for any of many reasons. Perhaps their parents didn’t finish high school. Perhaps they are a first-generation immigrant or don’t speak English as their native language. Nearly all, she said, are from low-income families.

Many of the schools they work in are continuation high schools, which are schools in the public school system where students at risk for not graduating attend. The classes are designed to be more flexible and to recognize the challenges that these students face.

Young Theaterworks uses that flexibility to create a program that works with classroom teachers and complements the subjects they are offering. They try to be in each class for 90 minutes.

“We are very hands-on and visceral, working with the students and trying to get them out of their shells,” Chavez said. “We want them to trust the process and to trust us. That takes quite some doing because some of them are shut down. It’s not like going into a theater program where the kids are committed to that and they’re there to do a play.”

In addition to the Art of the Monologue project, they also have playwriting projects. Sometimes those projects spread out over multiple years. Sometimes they will bring in an “elder” to make the program multi-generational and let the students participate in living history.

Six years ago, they started a multi-year, multi-generation program where for four years, students interviewed Chicano elders who had been part of the Chicano movement of the 1960s and 1970s. Students wrote plays based on the lives of these elders.

“There were 14 of these plays over the course of five years,” Chavez said. “We took four of those plays and did one production, ‘I Witness.’ We spent two years at one school developing the project and having them work on acting skills. Also, some of them got involved in design—there was a costume design group, a sound design group. Some are more into music and can work with our composers. You kind of have to find where their interests lie. Fortunately, with theater, there are a lot of options.”

She also points out that it is critical for these schools that the program takes place during the school day as after school is almost impossible.

“They have a shorter day,” Chavez said. “Some of them have children. They’re high school students, but they might have a child at home. Or they’re helping the family and they have to work. So, when the bell rings, they’ve got things to do.”

This past year has been one of the most challenging years since the program started in 2001. The students they work with are those who suffer the most educational loss because of the pandemic and have the most challenges with learning remotely.

Classroom teachers warned the teaching artists that this year would be tougher than ever because students were not engaging. They weren’t turning on their cameras, they stayed muted and only occasionally used chat.

Eventually, the teaching artists were able to overcome that because their class was fun and creative, something that Chavez felt the students welcomed. They even had some classes where the majority would turn on their camera.

“We want them to know that they have value, that their stories have value, that their voices have value, that their own way of speaking or writing has value, and that we deeply care about that,” Chavez said. “We care so much that we will bring in all these mentors and actors and a sound designer. We will bring this bevy of adults who care about their expression and that gives them the confidence to take what they’ve learned from our program and apply it to another class.”

Benitez said the Young Theaterworks program made her want to go to class because the teaching artists interacted with them and asked them how they were feeling. She said she liked that they would play games with them and help them write.

It also helped her to connect with the other students in the class.

“This is my first year of high school and it was really hard—it still is in the other classes—to connect with my classmates,” Benitez said. “Some I knew, some I knew nothing about. With these monologues and plays, you learned a little about them. One of my classmates gave a monologue about superheroes. I like superheroes, maybe that’s something we can talk about in the future.”