Lately I have been remembering a project I was involved with years ago, bringing improvisational theatre activities into a female juvenile detention center in Cleveland Ohio. It was an experience which troubled me then, and continues to trouble me today.
It might be because I just read an academic article about a theatre project that helped reveal that one of the prime reasons for teenage pregnancy/AIDS spread in Africa was not a lack of birth control, but a culture of “sugar daddies” that went all the way up the education administration to the government, of men in power that would pay these young girls for sex. All the free condoms and abstinence lectures given by the more liberal members of the government wasn’t going to necessarily address that causal circumstance in this particular setting. This case was presented as if it did affect social change, because it culminated in a performance of a play sponsored by the government. (Rogers, Diffusion of Innovation)
I’m not so sure that our project caused much change.
We were a group of 4 or 5 actors and actresses, relatively new out of university with our fresh BFA degrees, and we went as part of an unpaid professional theatre internship to help the inmates better express themselves. The program was pitched on the theory that improvisational drama improves problem solving abilities and thinking on your feet. While I do think this may be true, what I learned was that the problems that these girls were facing seemed far to large for art to solve.
It was free-form improv that made the guards who sat in on all our sessions in the large gymnasium rather nervous. The girls in detention got to pick the characters, the setting, the motivation, and the problem that they were going to try to resolve through improv. Our director was good about defending our work and calming them down; although I don’t think that any of us really had the training to know what the heck we were dealing with.
These girls were real criminals. They had knifed people, stolen cars, dealt drugs, and as a small group of 2 or 3 eventually explained, most of them were sexually active girlfriends of gang members. They were ages were between 12 and 21. All but one or two were black.
We would set up the scene, and then they’d get a chance to act it out. Then we’d talk about it, how they might make different choices, and let them try it out by doing the scene again. They were good about finding positive ways out of finding a lost wallet, helping a stranded motorist, and even helping a threatened friend hide from their enemies. They seemed to want to do the right thing when given the chance. It wasn’t like they wanted to hurt other people for no reason. From the discussions after the improvs, we learned that it was really mostly about self-preservation, self-defense. Even the stealing and dealing drugs, it was just a way to make ends meet in a world that didn’t give them many options. Maybe other people could get a job at a fast food place, or maybe even a hospital. But not them. For them, it was too late.
We went back for a few hours every week for 12 weeks. The girls became increasingly familiar with us, happy to see us. They told us this was the best thing that ever happened to them. The male actors stopped coming; I can’t remember if that was intentional or not, but in the end, it was just us girls. Rich (or at least privileged) white young actresses trying to do something socially conscious, and tough, strong, proud Cleveland street girls, enjoying playing together, laughing together, dreaming that things could be better.
The worst thing about us is we felt sorry for ourselves because we hadn’t had our big breaks as movie stars yet, but it was always on the backs of our minds.
The last two sessions, we started to realize it was soon going to be over. One or two of the girls had to drop out for some reason or another; one got moved out, one got older and had to move to a real jail, others had court dates. Out of about a dozen to start, there were a core of only 5 or 6 that stayed through to the end. Of these, there are two whom I will never forget.
One was so inconsolable on our last day that all she did was cry. She couldn’t speak to us at all. She sat in the corner, with her beautiful light wavy hair and long cinnamon-colored face, knees tucked in to her thin lanky body, holding something in her hand. We kept asking her to comment, and normally she had a lot to say. But not that day.
Another, who was a confident leader, who looked like she could have been a thirty-year-old businesswoman if you put her in a suit, got to the end of a piece where we had prompted them to try to improvise what they would do when they were released from the center. She went through the motions, improvising joyful reunions with her sister and mom. But after, in the talkback, she came clean for us.
“You don’t understand. We appreciate what you’re doing, and all, but for us, there is no life when we get out of here. We failed. We got caught. Our boyfriends are going to come find us, and they are going to kill us.”
Me and Mia, another of the leaders, looked desperately at each other for a positive solution.
“What about the police?”
“What are they going to do? We’ll have to break the law again to be arrested for them to pay attention to us, and once we get to real prison, the gangs will just have us killed in there.”
“What if you…had a credit card, or enough money…what if you just ran away?”
“Man, you can’t run away from the gangs. They’re everywhere. They’ll find you. They always do.”
The girl gang leader smiled, and shook her head, knowing she had the last word. She didn’t seemed angry. She didn’t seem scared. It was just the way it was.
Then, the cinnamon faced girl ran up to us, and handed us a beautiful homemade card, drawn with the tagging style of graffiti, with sparkles and stickers and everything girly, that said “Thank you.” It was signed by all the other members of the group, the ones they could find, anyway. She was still crying. “I wish this would never end.”
We wanted so bad to hug them, but we weren’t supposed to make physical contact. If I remember right, I broke the rules and did it anyway. “I wish it wouldn’t either. You all can keep doing it yourselves, you know. You know what to do now,” we tried to encourage and conjole, half-heartedly.
I continued for many years to do arts program that targeted “low income” and “at-risk” youth. I am mostly proud of this work, particularly for early childhood groups. But I always wondered…these arts activities…these drama, music, dance, and visual arts skills and practices…can they really ever do anything directly to help improve these people’s quality of life? Can they solve the social, political, and economic challenges they face? Is it cruel to give them a taste of role playing and creating and free self-expression, encouraging dreams of fame and fortune and pop culture, when so much of our culture and political system are so violently oppressing?
It may not mean that we directly helped them “solve problems.” But that card and those tears proved to us that we made a connection. That we were in the same space together. That we shared things. Real things. And that for me is the purpose of art.
They gave us the gift of better understanding the life of girls in gangs.
The best case scenario is that maybe we gave them enough confidence in their acting skills to lie their way out of tricky situations, and maybe live a little bit longer than they thought was possible.
I wish I knew where those girls were now.