New Haven Independent

The play is called “Kingdom.” Aaron Jafferis, a Hillhouse and ECA grad, wrote it based on the stories of New Haven Latin King gang members. It had a celebrated run of performances in New York. Now it’s playing in New Haven, through this weekend, at Fair Haven Middle School. Bregamos Community Theater, which city housing inspector Rafael Ramos (pictured at top of this story) runs in his spare time, is staging it.

Click here to read Allan Appel’s interview with Ramos and Jafferis.

Saturday night’s sold-out crowd included Downtown Alderwoman Frances “Bitsie” Clark. Clark, who for many years ran the Arts Council of Greater New Haven, saw “Kingdom” in New York. Click on the play arrow to hear her reaction to seeing it again in Fair Haven.

Clark has devoted considerable time the past few months running hearings and meetings to consider how to tackle youth violence in town. Moved by Saturday’s performance, she said she plans to e-mail all her fellow aldermen to urge them to catch “Kingdom” this weekend. The mayor, too.

“This is very timely,” she said. “This is exactly what we’re talking about.”

The play portrays the influence of the Kings on rootless young Latinos as similar to the influence of another militaristic gang that aggressively recruits them with pie-in-the-sky promises: the U.S. military. Both recruiting organizations end up promoting a never-ending cycle of violence in the false belief that only more killing can stop killing, that urban kids abandoned by family and alienated from mainstream society can find “freedom” and security through a militaristic group. Notions like peace or human rights represent a threat. They come to equal heresy, disloyalty.

The production was especially timely on a week when a drill sergeant-turned-alderman from right across the Quinnipiac River, Alex Rhodeen of Fair Haven Heights, argued that affixing the word “peace” to the official title of a veterans’ memorial would leave veterans feeling “slighted.” It also “concerned” Rhoden to hear that banners near the memorial would promote the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In the turf claimed by the Kingdom — or in Guantanamo — no one has to worry about such slights or concerns.