Reality Comes Alive On Living Stage
It is rare for actors to let the audience decide how a play ends. But that is just the sort of participation the Living Stage Theatre Company demands.
On Saturday, the Washington, D.C.-based group presented their hard-hitting musical drama, "Lynched Hopes and Unsung Songs," at Seattle's Langston Hughes Cultural Arts Center. A raw, sometimes bleak look at inner-city youth, the play follows a 13-year-old girl named Chantay to the brink of suicide.
Her reasons for self-destruction are as familiar as today's headlines. A friend killed by a stray bullet. A brother dealing crack cocaine. A father in jail. No hope, little encouragement for her dreams of becoming a singer.
But just as the actress playing Chantay was about to slash her wrists on the Langston Hughes stage, Living Stage's founder-director Robert Alexander stepped forward to "freeze" the action. He asked the invited audience of 150 Seattle theatre artists, educators and community workers (many of whom are participating in Living Stage workshops this week) to dictate the play's ending.
"Do it out of your fertile imaginations and deep hearts," implored Alexander. "You're the writers now - you make it up."
Suggestions flew. Chantay could win a Lotto jackpot. Her brother should walk into the room and prevent her suicide. The ghost of Chantay's dead friend might appear and save her.
As ideas multiplied, Alexander prodded, pushed, asked for more details, invited people to act out their suggestions. And he reminded everyone that, realistically, happy endings don't come easy for kids like Chantay.
"What does she do with the rest of her life?" he asked plaintively. "How does she cope with the same conditions that have kept her down?"
This kind of theater-sparked problem-solving session is a Living Stage specialty. Founded by Alexander as an outreach program of Arena Stage, the nationally known ensemble has conducted drama workshops for disabled children, prisoners, teenage mothers and drug and alcohol abusers since 1965. That makes it the longest-running program of its kind in the nation.
Four hard-working actor-writers and a musical director do the actual performing, but the 63-year old Alexander keeps the messianic flame alive. Fervent and uncompromising, he articulates the group's mission in passionate declarations.
"I believe that imagination is more important than knowledge, and that art serves and saves," Alexander told The Times. "In the moment of artistic creativity children become whole and sane . . . they become what Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. called `other-centered' instead of self-centered, and they stop being victims."
By involving troubled children in what-if exercises and improvisational drama, Alexander hopes to "empower them, give them a belief in change, and keep their love of life alive."
The company's visit here was engineered by Laura Penn, a former Living Stage administrator who is now associate manager of Seattle Repertory Theatre. Penn invited representatives from Intiman Theatre, the Seattle public schools, Seattle Children's Theatre and other institutions to plan the group's week-long residency of performances and training sessions. The Hasbro Foundation funded the visit.
"Living Stage is truly a role model," explained Penn. "Their process empowers young people because it is so experiential and participatory. I thought bringing them here would help bring our own community together."
Local actress and educator Jackie Moscou concurred. "This is the Rolls Royce of theater companies using creativity as a tool with at-risk youth. They provide fantastic inspiration for those of us in Seattle who are trying to do something similar."
Alexander says he hopes Living Stage can provide "celebrative support" to like-minded artists and educators in the Northwest. "From what I understand, there are a lot of people here doing good things with children in this vein. We want to buoy them, let them know they're on the right track, and give them more techniques."
For Steve Sneed, director of the newly remodeled Langston Hughes center and coordinator of its teen drama program, the exchange is timely.
"I know a number of kids in this neighborhood who are a lot like Chantay,"says Sneed. "We have to find ways to reach them."