Playin' the Pearl White

When 20-year-old Irma suspected she was pregnant, she went to her friends at the Pearl White Theater of Performing Arts for advice. Once her suspicions were confirmed and she was subsequently kicked out of her mother's home, she went back to the theater to obtain information about the kinds of social services available to her. Together Irma - who is unmarried and unemployed - and the theater's co-director, Melvyn Hayward Sr., filled out a crush of paperwork so Irma could obtain AFDC monies, medical coverage, and food stamps. Now Irma is getting the kind of assistance she needs.

Such is a day in the life of the Pearl White Theater in Venice, California, a place where art and social consciousness come together. But this isn't the Venice of trendy shops, art galleries, and body builders. This is the "other" Venice, a federally subsidized housing neighborhood of 9,200 residents that's patrolled by a special police task force of 27 officers and a private security company.

This Venice struggles to retain its black identity in the face of what many residents believe is a conspiracy among police, whites, and developers to drive them out. This Venice struggles - as it has for decades - with poverty, joblessness, drug addiction, and broken families.

It's called Oakwood, a community one square mile wide of poor African Americans, Latinos, and a growing white population that's smack in the center of Venice - just a few blocks from the Pacific Ocean where single-family dwellings start at $300,000. Oakwood is so mean that grammar-school kids have their own gang, the Tiny Insane Crips, and preteens sell crack on the street day and night. Local police records indicate there are more than 250 identified gang members in Oakwood alone. Drug arrests there run about 30 a month. In this Venice, success is measured by surviving, staying out of jail, and holding a job.

Say what you will about Oakwood, no one can quarrel about the success of the Pearl White Theater, named for a local activist. The theater is the brainchild of actor Beau Bridges, a Venice High School graduate. Ever since gang activity started heating up in the late '70s, community leaders began looking for alternative recreational activities for Oakwood's kids. So, when Bridges started hanging out in the neighborhood and bringing video equipment for the kids to experiment with, children's advocates saw a match worth pursuing.

Two decades later, Bridges is still the theater's chief financial backer and liaison to the film industry. Melvyn Hayward and co-director Robert Shipp Sr., an ex-gang member, serve as its operating managers.

Adjacent to the neighborhood Teen Post, where youths go to lift weights, the theater occupies a battered storefront building on Abbott Kinney that serves as its rehearsal hall. There are 80 mostly African-American people, ranging in age from 2 to 50, active in the theater. The actors write their own material on subjects that are real to them: teen-age pregnancy, peer pressure to join a gang, drug abuse, and AIDS in the black community. The plays are presented at local venues and on cable television for a small donation that's later used for field trips to Disneyland and nearby museums.

"I get tired of seeing so much pain in this community. I want to give these kids some joy," says co-director Hayward. "The theater is a place for the whole family to express itself positively."

INSIDE THE TINY playhouse is a mishmash of broken furniture and production supplies. Above a worn-out sofa, photographs of Martin Luther King Jr., Hank Aaron, and local kids hang on putty-colored walls. Hayward has just gotten off work and rushed to meet the young players. There isn't much room to work, so together they walk across the street to Westminster Elementary to practice in the school's auditorium.

The troupe isn't rehearsing for any play right now. The two dozen youths who come to the theater four nights a week say they are more serious about learning the technical end of the business, rather than the glamorous task of performing in front of a camera. So, for now, they're concentrating on creative writing and movement classes for actors.

On this night, both a writing class and a karate workout are in progress. Two dozen kids - mostly boys - are participating in a military-style warm-up in the auditorium's main room. In the back room, Irma and 10 other youths, ages 7 to 15, are busy putting together the community's first bilingual newsletter, Straight From Oakwood. Lindsey Haley, a longtime Oakwood resident and published Chicano author who dropped out of school in the eighth grade, leads the youths through a discussion about local homelessness and possible solutions.

"I don't want this to be like school," Haley says. "I want writing to be fun so I let the kids write about anything that interests them."

It's no surprise, then, that most of the kids are writing about what they often know all-too-well: tragedy. Irma - who migrated from El Salvador six years ago with a mother she was never very close to - writes about how isolated and disconnected she feels living in the United States. This is not paradise, she explains. In another article, Irma writes a eulogy to a friend killed recently by gunfire.

"I save my poetry for myself," the brunette says softly.

In the newsletter a story about a gang shooting is told as witnessed from three different perspectives. Profile pieces on popular teachers and articles on school news are included. Mike Morals, 14, the Mechanical Bike Boy, writes his own column about - what else? - repairing bicycles.

"We have a lot of fun here," says 13-year-old Qianna Thomas. "We have more freedom here than at school. There are too many rules at school. Here we get to use our talent. We don't just hang around."

HANG AROUND THEY don't. Some of the youths have appeared in feature films, TV series, and commercials. Christian Coleman, 14, appeared in Oliver Stone's South Central last year. Others have gone on to show-biz careers, and some have been seen in shows directed by Bridges.

"The Pearl White Theater is the most productive community-based program in Oakwood," says Brad Carson, a Santa Monica probation officer who supervises Oakwood residents.

If there is a single mission for the theater's staff it is to offer the kids a place to express themselves positively so they don't just stand on the street corner. After all, many of the youths who attend the Pearl White Theater are excluded from school activities because of poor grades, behavioral problems, or their inability to pay for uniforms and supplies. At the Pearl White Theater, everything is free and nobody is excluded. There is just one rule: No drugs.

"These kids appear happy, but they're hurting inside. They suffer from low self-esteem, and every one of them comes from a dysfunctional home," Hayward says ticking off their names. "At the theater, they can express what's inside" and not be judged harshly.

"At my school, we have plays but the teachers put on what they want to do," says Sarah Hones, 14. "Here, at the theater, we're asked what we would like to do a play about, and then we write the play and we act in the play."

In performances of It's Deadly, Point Blank, actors face AIDS in Oakwood head on. Characters tell users to sterilize their instruments and use condoms. One user tells sadly about the death of his girlfriend whom he infected.

The task of overseeing the theater's daily operations is left to Hayward, a grassroots community activist who is "the only person in Oakwood you need to know." Hayward runs the theater like a full-service community center, successfully assembling knowledgeable professionals and badly needed information into one place.

Until recently, Hayward was in charge of the Early Intervention Program at Didi Hirsch Mental Health Clinic in Venice, a project that targets youths who are at high-risk to become substance abusers. At Didi Hirsch, Hayward worked with drug interventionists, homeless shelter activists, health care workers, government funding officials, probation officers, church leaders, food distributors, tax preparers, employers, and job trainers - bringing all of this experience to the theater at night. He also runs a homework center at the local library for kids who can't find a quiet place to study at home.

"I'm hooked up in all kinds of ways. I go out into the community and find these kids who need help. I talk to their parents. I work their whole family," Hayward says.

Hayward is a good recruiter because he knows these kids well.

"I eat breakfast with them at school, I see them on the streets, I encourage them to come to the homework center and to the theater. They're what keep me going. I love these kids."

The program's real success is that it teaches the kids to believe in themselves and keeps them off the streets at night, but that's not to say there are no failures. "It's true," says Hayward. "Sooner or later many of these kids are going to want to party and use dope.

"These kids are up against some heavy odds. They see a gangbanger with a nice ride, nice clothes, and he asks them to sell a couple of hundred-dollar rocks. That will put them in contact with the penal system. I tell them, 'you can come now [for counseling] or you can come back later.' They got me any way it goes."

Carla F. Levenson is a free-lance writer living in Los Angeles.