Professional Actors, Mentally Disabled Share the Boards in a Glendale Theater

When Rebecca Proctor joined the Glendale-based Meridian Theatre and Academy in 1985, she wanted nothing more than to distinguish herself as an actress.

With five years in an Oregon repertory company behind her, she thought of the stage as the dominant theme of her life.

But Proctor soon found an old career resurfacing. Since her teen-age years she had worked in a number of state centers providing professional care and recreation therapy to the mentally disabled. To help get her feet on the ground, she got a job working for a year with retarded people by day so she could work with actors by night.

Then it dawned on her that the two themes of her life could be joined. Proctor proposed to the Meridian Theatre’s board of directors a project to put professional actors on stage with mentally retarded adults.

They accepted her idea, and under Proctor’s guidance, the unusual company has produced two musical variety shows.

“We have 17 developmentally disabled adults working with 10 non-disabled professional actors of Meridian Theatre,” Proctor said. “They are limited, but they have amazed us.”

Among the conditions classified as developmental disabilities are learning disabilities, mental retardation, epilepsy, autism and cerebral palsy. Persons with such handicaps often have a difficult time taking care of themselves.

Proctor said the discipline required in putting together a show makes workshop participants more self-sufficient and responsible, and the non-disabled performers provided effective role models for the handicapped actors.

“Without anybody guiding them, they were following the lead of the professional actors,” Proctor said. “They would hang up their costumes. They would put away props. Just the experience itself is the teaching tool.”

In their first production, an original musical melodrama titled “Tumbleweed Junction,” each retarded member was paired with a non-disabled performer and guided through the production numbers in groups. But Proctor said many of the handicapped actors demonstrated an ability to handle individual acts and to contribute material for the script of this year’s show, “The Rise and Folly of Vaudeville.”

“The program has just been a tremendous success,” said Carole Jouroyan, executive director for the Glendale Assn. for the Retarded, a co-sponsor of the workshop. “We all have a fantasy of being a success on stage.”

For Proctor, 37, who became Meridian’s managing director in 1988, the program was the culmination of many years’ work with the retarded.

After earning an associate of arts degree in mental health from the University of Alabama, she began work as an orderly in a center for the mentally handicapped in Decatur, Ala. From there she went to the Pearl S. Buck Center in Eugene, Ore., helping people with multiple handicaps and behavior problems.

Proctor began to integrate theater skills into her work in 1980, when the center’s directors expanded their music therapy workshop to include theater. She began taking classes at a community college where she earned a second degree in theater.

Proctor’s growing interest in dramatic art led her to a successful audition for the Oregon Repertory Theatre, where she worked for five years as stage manager and performer. Perhaps by coincidence, Proctor found herself cast as characters with physical or psychological limitations.

“One lady asked me what kind of a mission I was on that I was playing all these disabled people,” she said.

When she moved to Los Angeles in 1984, Proctor began working with the Self-Aid Workshop, a branch of the Glendale Assn. for the Retarded. The workshop, funded by the California Department of Rehabilitation, employs 46 mentally disabled adults who work there five days a week in jobs involving bulk mailing, recycling and repetitive assembly. The facility also provides job training, speech therapy and classes in adult living skills.

After she joined the Meridian company in the spring of 1985, Proctor began to think about bringing Meridian’s actors to the Self-Aid Workshop, which is located in a commercial building on San Fernando Road. She found the professional actors willing to experiment with an adapted program for retarded performers. While continuing with their own productions--they are currently doing a show in Long Beach--the members of the troupe found time to work on a daily basis with the retarded, who are classed as apprentices.

Proctor was surprised at how readily the disabled took to acting.

Sitting in her sunny office in a colorful tie-dyed T-shirt, Proctor told about discovering one performer’s hidden ability to memorize lines of dialogue. Although he had remained almost completely mute during the years Proctor had worked with him at the Self-Aid Workshop, he was among the first to sign up for the cast of “Tumbleweed Junction.”

Proctor cast the man as a backup musician with a tambourine, and placed him on stage beside the piano player. The performance came off without a hitch. But some weeks later when the cast was kidding around one day, he began reciting large blocks of dialogue from the show. The man is now the official understudy for everyone in the cast. Proctor said she began to realize the organizers had underestimated the abilities of many of the disabled performers.

Shortly before the first production, the project received a $1,500 grant from the Brody Art Fund and also secured the use of the Brand Library in Glendale for rehearsal space.

The group chose a vaudeville revival for the second production because it would allow the performers to work in small groups and as individual acts. The disabled players were given more choice as to what they wanted to do. Their input was far greater.

Proctor said the second show took longer to develop than the organizers anticipated. The group began rehearsals for “The Rise and Folly of Vaudeville” in September, 1989. Their first performance was in March.

In it, Victor Nigro, had a solo.

“I felt proud to be on the stage with people to let them see what I could do,” said Nigro, 39, who is mildly retarded and wears a helmet to protect his head because of a severe seizure disorder. He sang “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.”

“It was an absolute show-stopper,” Proctor said. “It shows people that they can do things a non-disabled person can do. It gives the community a chance to see them in a light they don’t think about.”

Employment in show business is one goal of the Self-Aid Workshop that may be hard for the Meridian’s apprentices to reach. Proctor said a few want to become professional actors.

“One of my hopes is that, with programs such as ‘Life Goes On,’ these people can now build resumes,” said Proctor. “One of my next projects is to get head shots and resumes made for these people.”

But that isn’t the first item on the agenda.

“The number one goal is to have fun,” said Proctor. “Anything that comes in addition to that has been not planned but is welcomed.”