nothin Drama Lab for Life in Fair Haven | New Haven Independent

Drama Lab for Life in Fair Haven

IMG_0831.JPGAndres, the leader of the violent Latin Kings gang in New Haven, is in mourning over the dead body of Juan, who has just shot himself with the weapon Andres has given him to exact vengeance against a rival gang. Caught between loyalty to his gang and inability to kill another human being, Juan has turned the weapon on himself. Fortunately, the dead body this time is on the stage only, and the blood is not real.

However, this challenging play, Kingdom, an exploration of youth violence by New Haven playwright Aaron Jafferis and produced by the Bregamos Community Theater Company, beginning Thursday night and running through February 17 at the Fair Haven Middle School on Grand Avenue, has a great and pressing ambition: to harness theater’s therapeutic potential to teach its audiences that what happens on stage, if understood, can be avoided in real life.

IMG_0835.JPGThe Independent sat down during dress rehearsal with playwright Jafferis (on left in the photo), who graduated from Hillhouse High and currently teaches theater writing and poetry at various Elm City schools and with producer, Rafael Ramos, founder of Bregamos (middle in photo, with Bregamos’ board member Dino Monteiro), and asked: Why this particular play? Why now? Why in Fair Haven? And with what message or feeling did they want their audiences to leave the theater?

p(clear). IMG_0830.JPGRR: You know I saw Kingdom in workshop in New York, where, by the way, it won an award for most promising new musical at the New York Musical Theater Festival, and I fell in love with it in the first three minutes. The subject, the hip hop musical style, it all speaks to us in New Haven, at this time. You know I’ve had members of my family too shot down on the streets. Bregamos is dedicated to creating theater out of the real life stories in the community, and this is it.

p(clear). AJ: It means a lot for me to have this play in New Haven. I grew up here. It’s the place I want to live. I love this city but I want it to be better, and one way it can be a lot better is not to have young people die at ridiculous rates. It’s hip hop but it’s for adults and kids. I want the play to engage older people to come up with solutions and younger people to see themselves on the stage and to prevent that from happening to them.

p(clear). NHI: Do you really think theater can accomplish social change?

p(clear). IMG_0828.JPGAJ: Look, theater can be a rehearsal for life. Let it happen in theater that kids feel uncared for, or powerless, and do terrible things in order to feel that they belong. Let us all understand that, and leave here to do something about it, as kids and as adults, then our job will be done. One of the big realizations people will get, I hope, is that in this society we have allowed a level of violence to occur in the city. And one of the most interesting things for me is that that the same language of violence, of proving yourself, of manhood and all that is also the language of our national life. The lead gang banger in the play (Andres, at left in the photo, played by Yale senior Gabriel Hernandez) berates his friend Juan (played by ECA high schooler Michael Improta) with language almost identical to that which George Bush uses: We have to get them before they get us.” Or: We have to retaliate to prove ourselves strong.” That’s exactly what’s heard in a gang culture in New Haven and other cities, where strength and power are associated with violence and not with communication and relationship. But if it’s there in our national life, how can you entirely blame the kids! Let the adults leave the theater thinking about that.

p(clear). RR: We’re producing this play in part to encourage dialogue about the violence in the city, and that means we’re going to have panel discussions and forums based on the play (on Saturday, Feb. 10, for example). But in a larger sense, we’re here in Fair Haven and doing a play for people who don’t normally go to Yale or to the Long Wharf. They are going to see their lives on the stage and lives of their kids and they are going to be talking about it among themselves. That’s a way to give people a measure of power. And then following this run, we’re going to do a whole series of workshops for 13 to 18 year olds. The kids are going to do monologues about their lives; it’s remarkable the stuff that will come up. Yes, theater can be very therapeutic.

p(clear). IMG_0825.JPGAJ: I’m also particularly excited about the way Bregamos is bringing in actors from all over this community, trained and not. Five of the eight actors have not really acted before. But they all can really rap. The kids doing the light and sound are learning that craft for the first time (in the photo: Satchel Ramos to the right of Jaffreis and Ernesto Otelo, from the Sound School and Wilbur Cross respectively).We also of course want to make young people like this excited about theater. Part of what leads people to violence is this lack of belonging to anything, and theater is a great community that, like hip hop, spans all kinds of boundaries. Hey, I would be thrilled if someone sees Kingdom and concludes: This play absolutely does not reflect my life. I think I’m going to write a play to kick this hip hop play’s butt. That would be terrific.

p(clear). RR: Yes, theater is a lot more than acting. Like Aaron says, it’s huge, with a very wide skill range. It’s stage set and it’s marketing, and I must say that the degree of community support for Kingdom is remarkable. It’s a first for Bregamos, enabling us — and this is our seventh production — actually to pay stipends to the principals for the first time and to advertise. We’re going to bring in people not only from Fair Haven but Hartford, Norwalk. This play, in subject, and in how it’s bringing theater to the community and the community to theater is really a turning point for Bregamos. And stay tuned: Our next production will be a stage version of To Kill a Mockingbird. We’ll recruit cast for that show from our monologue workshops in the spring.

p(clear). IMG_0823.JPGOther actors in the production include Vanessa Soto (pictured), Efrain Garcia, and Anthony Rivera.

p(clear). IMG_0836.JPGMark Villani (on the right), who teaches stage craft to kids at Hamden High School and is also with the Yale Repertory Theater props department, did the set, assisted by Pat Newsome. Music is by Ian Williams, like Jafferis, a graduate of New York University’s MFA Musical Theatre Writing program, and the play is directed by Dexter Singleton (too busy to be pictured), who previously collaborated on Bregamos’s last production of Stephen Guirgis’s Jesus Hopped the A Train.

p(clear). Kingdom plays at the Fair Haven Middle School black box theater — by the way, the first production, since the school renovation, in this wonderful 99-seat New Haven gem — Feb. 8, 10, 20, 11, 15, 16, and 17. All shows are at 8 p.m. The producers say there is enough violent language to suggest only ages 13 and up attend, with parental consent. Tickets can be purchased by calling 203 – 643-2314 or by email: [email protected].

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