Helping Youths Get Their Acts Together

For kids struggling to find their voice, South Coast Repertory offers a stage of sorts. Provide us the space and the kids, theater company officials tell county youth groups, and we’ll give them acting lessons for free.

Instructors from the Costa Mesa-based repertory have worked with nonprofit groups, schools and homeless shelters across Orange County and taught children underserved in the arts for more than 18 years. By training kids from ages 7 to 17 in vocalization, movement and ensemble teamwork, teachers give the thespians skills they can use off-stage: teamwork, confidence before audiences and familiarity with new cultural worlds.

“The whole goal is to help kids with their self-esteem--to provide them with a safe environment where they can express themselves, which is unusual for some of these kids,” said Sheila Hillinger, who supervises the theater’s youth programs.

Kamarr Richee, 18, graduated in 1993 from the theater’s youth program that operated out of Santa Ana’s Second Baptist Church. The program--called a neighborhood conservatory--brought him out of his shy and bookish shell.

Eight years of acting later, Richee now calls himself “outgoing and outspoken.”

“That one summer that I was in the neighborhood conservatory, it changed my life completely,” he said.

This year the repertory has worked with six groups, including Helen Estock Elementary in Tustin and the Interval House in Westminster. The average cost of each session is about $1,000, funded by private donations.

During the school year, about 20 kids attend each conservatory. But at Shalimar Learning Center in Costa Mesa, the only neighborhood conservatory operating during the summer, as many as 13 fifth- and sixth-graders have taken part.

Drama programs aren’t available in local elementary schools, said Laura Johnson, the director of Think Together, which runs the program at Shalimar. Even if they were, she added, many of the neighborhood kids would be too busy working after school or baby-sitting their siblings to participate.

Since South Coast Repertory brought the acting classes into the Shalimar neighborhood five years ago, though, some children have made the time.

“The excitement they get from completing an exercise--they’re fueled,” teacher Carrie Gifford said. “They love it.”

Three hours each week, Gifford asks her students at Shalimar to scream, dance and jump so that they learn to use their bodies, voices and faces as acting instruments.

On this particular day, the kids are asked to act like animals, exaggerating their motions and facial expressions until their partner laughs. Yessica Ortega, 10, had been doing a perfectly good snake impression earlier. But for some reason imitating a bird was just too hard.

Sitting on the floor, Yessica pleaded, “How do I do it?”

Gifford flapped her arms wildly and chirped. The other kids, seated in a circle, clapped in encouragement. Finally Yessica tweeted and flailed about. Seconds later, her 11-year-old partner, Isidro Vargas, was cracking up.

Because of exercises like these, the students in the program leave it a little braver than when they began.

“You get more used to talking alone and not being shy,” Yessica said.

Standout students from the Neighborhood Conservatory can even earn a scholarship--worth up to $900--to perform with South Coast Repertory.

That’s what happened to Richee. He has been actively involved with the repertory since he was 10. His first year was funded by a minority scholarship.

“Before the neighborhood conservatory, I knew nothing about theater and had no interest in it,” he said. “It really opened up my eyes.”

In the fall, Richee will begin premed classes at Prairie View A&M; University in Texas. But if making money were no object, he’d be pursuing a career in theater instead.

“Whenever I have the free time,” Richee said, “I will act.”