I applaud this group Off The Page Education!
Betsy Combier
President, Theater Kids DBA ADVOCATZ
betsy.combier@gmail.com
Editor, NYC Rubber Room Reporter
Editor, Parentadvocates.org
Editor, New York Court Corruption
Editor, National Public Voice
Editor, The NYC Public Voice
Teens are Tackling Racism by Staging a Play About Police Brutality
LINKBy Amy Zimmer | July 19, 2016 1:24pm
New York City students at a rehearsal for Off the Page Education's All American
PARK SLOPE — Shaqur Williams still feels raw about the time police officers confronted him about a block away from his Bedford-Stuyvesant home.
He said
the officers, who demanded to know if he had drugs on him or knew where to buy
them, approached him as he was walking home two summers ago.
“I’m lucky
enough to have gone home without being hurt,” said Shaqur, now 17 years old.
Williams
is now channeling his anger into art, working on a play about police brutality
with teaching artists from Off the Page Education.
They’ve
adapted the young adult novel, "All
American Boys," which tells the story of a black teen, Rashad,
whose violent arrest is captured on video that goes viral, and the story of white
teen, Quinn, who grapples with speaking out after witnessing the beating by an
officer, who is a family friend.
The
immersive, site-specific piece will be performed by a racially diverse group of
public school students, who auditioned for the parts from around the city,
alongside professional adult actors, from July 25 – 30, in and around Park Slope’s M.S. 51
and Washington Park.
 |
Shaqur Williams, second from right When Off the Page’s co-directors Jody Drezner Alperin and Vicky Finney Crouch contacted the book’s authors about the project in January, they knew the young people they work with in the city’s schools were grappling with the deaths of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown and Eric Garner, among others, at the hands of police. |
The show
took on even more resonance the week rehearsal started, when Alton Sterling and
Philando Castile were shot and killed by police — then five officers were shot
and killed at a protest against police killings in Dallas. Then, last week,
another three officers were killed in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
The teens
in the cast have been talking about what’s happening, and they’re talking about
race — openly, honestly and often.
Drezner
Alperin wants the students to engage with each other on the difficult topic of
racism, she said, but the group sets certain rules, like you can only speak your
“truth” and not someone else’s.
After a
conversation, she added, “You have to accept there might not be closure.”
Harry
Seabrook, a senior at LaGuardia High School of Music &
Art and Performing Arts, who plays Quinn, said talking about race —
especially with kids from other races — was rare, but it has become
increasingly normal among this group of budding actors.
On the
first day, in particular, there was a “heavy racial discussion” where black
students talked about their run-ins with police while he shared a story about a
fairly innocuous time he was stopped over a MetroCard.
After
sharing, he thought he made a gaffe what would divide the cast.
“I thought
that would be it,” he recounted. “It’s going to be black kids sitting with
black kids and white kids sitting with white kids, but that didn’t happen.”
That,
however, didn’t happen. Instead the conversations continued.
“I didn’t
realize you could have these discussions [about racism],” Harry said. “It’s
like people, who can see, trying to describe colors to people who are blind:
White people just don’t see this stuff. They can’t.”
Harry Seabrook, right
He already feels like his horizons have broadened. “I feel sort of like Quinn,” he said of his character. “If society wants to tell us that white people have all the power, still, in this country, like they say in Spider-Man, with great power comes great responsibility. We’re the ones who have power. We’ve got to change it too.”
Tahj
Smith, who plays Rashad, recently graduated high school fromNEST+M, a
gifted and talented program on the Lower East Side, which had a lot of
“different types of people,” he said, but they usually only mixed during
artistic endeavors, like his comedy troupe or in plays.
“Anything
that has to do with art was always diverse because art has no boundaries and
art doesn’t discriminate,” said Smith, who signed onto the project after
reading by the “powerful” book.
He especially
liked how the directors told him they didn’t want this to be a play that would
simply allow white people to say, “Oh, I saw a play about race,” but offered
something deeper.
“It’s an
intense subject,” acknowledged co-director Finney Crouch.
“It’s kind
of refreshing to do political theater, especially with young people,” she
added. “They don’t get to do this because I think people feel that it’s too
hard and the subject matter is too difficult and they can’t handle it and we
should protect children from the outside world.
“But we
shouldn’t because they have this world,” she continued. “It’s their world.”
Sam
Dhobhany, a former M.S. 51 student in the show, hopes the play will help
convince the audience to keep pushing for change.
“All of
these incidents have been happening, and people are, like, giving up, like what
can we do?” he said. “We need to do everything in our power to prevent these
issues, and we’re not going to back down from this fight we’re facing until we
see a change.”
Schools
Chancellor Carmen Fariña last week wrote a letter to educators and families
that it was incumbent on them to discuss these challenging issues and create
"a safe space" for students to do so.
“I
strongly believe that as New York City educators and parents, we have a moral
obligation to address the difficult questions about race, violence, and guns,
and to engage students in the critical work of healing our country,” Fariña
wrote, as first reported by Chalkbeat. “We must not
avoid these tough conversations—they are necessary if we hope to build a just
society for all.”
"All American Boys" will run from July 25-30 at M.S.
51 and Washington Park in Park Slope. It's presented by Off the Page Education,
which is in residence this summer at Piper Theatre Productions. The event is
free, with a suggested donation of $5, but space is limited. Tickets can be reserved
online. There’s
“talk back” open to the community on July 25 at the Old Stone House with the
cast and crew, Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams and the book’s authors
Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely.