Interviews with participants in Healing Arts Program at Calderón Boys & Girls Club: student, teachers, Jump-Start artist, audience members and social director, volunteers

By Keith Hennessy

Interview with Isabelle Gonzalez, student, Healing Arts Program at Calderón Boys & Girls Club.

Keith Hennessy: So, tell me your name.

Isabelle Gonzalez: My name is Isabelle Gonzalez.

KH: What is it like to come to this program? What do you like about it? What do you not like about it?

IG: It’s fun.

KH: Yeah. What do you do here?

IG: Play basketball, play pool, you go swimming, you play computers.

KH: How about in this room with Dianne and Topo, what do you do?

IG: They teach us magic tricks.

KH: What else?

IG: Play games.

KH: How long have you been coming here?

IG: One year.

KH: Do you come every week?

IG: Every Saturday.

Interview with Topo/Jose Manuel Galvan, teacher in Healing Arts Program at Calderón

Keith Hennessy: Tell me your name.

Topo/Jose Manuel Galvan: My name is Jose Manuel Galvan. They call me Topo since a long time ago, 30 years ago when I started doing theater.

KH: Do you do other programs with Jump-Start or do you just do this one here?

T: A couple. With this program, I just started. This was my third class. But before that, I performed over there a monologue. I performed with a group of teenagers. I performed with another company. I’ve had that relationship since a long time ago.

KH: And this program here at the Calderón Boys & Girls club, it is a kind of special program. Do you want to tell me about it?

T: As far as I know, this is like a pilot program. They want to do this during the whole year I guess. They invited me a couple of weeks ago to become a part of this program. I am using my skills as a leader to let the kids have fun. That was really my goal there, because three classes and this situation is really hard to handle. I think it is really a beautiful program. To have the theater as a tool of healing is a nice and a beautiful idea.

KH: Is there anything else you would say about Jump-Start in terms of the way they involve themselves? They have a site and they do these productions, but they also have ways of doing this community teaching. Is there anything you want to say about that?

T: Well, I feel great to have a space in the city to be able to hold the whole idea about theater, about humanity, about many ideas. The freedom to express yourself. With this kind of program, I think Jump-Start is moving on. Like going into the schools and the Boys Club and other spaces in the city. Growing this kind of program is really hard, but I think Jump-Start has the potential to do that. I am really happy to be a part of it.

KH: What do you think are the challenges for them? What are they going to be dealing with in trying to do this scale of community outreach?

T: Well, to begin with, I think the community organizers has to understand the approach of arts in healing the community. Or to help a little bit in the community. Help. That right there is a big challenge. We don’t have the right spaces to work with. A lot of kids we are involved with — half of the kids today are under medication. Those kinds of things are a big challenge for Jump-Start to put clear what is the offering for this kind of activities to help the community to be safe and to grow in a healthy way. They have to understand that we need the right spaces and the respect of our hours to do whatever we could bring to them. Jump-Start has a lot of responsibility with them to keep that track.

KH: What do you think are the right spaces?

T: I mean an empty space. I’m not going to say that a special wood floor or whatever, mirrors. No, I’m not going to ask for a special treatment, I am going to ask for a respect of the space. To be having that class, the respect for the time is very nice. Here at the Boys Club, I have to deal with a lot of distractions. They came from really a hard situation, the kids. You repeat that environment during the class, you are not going to be really effective in your goals. That’s why I am asking for that kind of respect. That’s a challenge for Jump-Start. I know this is a process and you are not working all the time in the better situations. I know that. I’ve worked with kids at risk before in L A. I think you have to offer that safe space to express themselves and the time and the respect for the time.

KH: I also work with a lot of youth, and also youth at risk. There is always this real dance between trying to offer something that is fun and creative and also the discipline for kids who are not used to focusing. I was just wondering what you think about the numbers? How many kids per teacher? What do you think is ideal, if you could create a situation?

T: I think that depends on the teacher. Some teachers feel comfortable with large numbers. Some teachers are handling only six kids in the class. That depends on the class and the energy of the class. When I start working with theater, I don’t want to have a person responsible for the discipline from outside. I think you have to save the space and let the participants know that it is a safe space, but it is a freedom space. You have to express yourself, it doesn’t matter what. Well, you have to be careful with the physical thing and different things. I’ve handled 100 teenagers in a workshop. But I think 15 is a good number. In between ten and 20. That depends on the space, too. As soon as they understand the kind of the game they are playing they behave. To me, it could be a clown principle thing. If they are busy having fun you are not going to be worried to put some kind of military discipline there. It doesn’t make sense.

Interview with Linda Escobedo, cultural arts instructor at Calderón Boys & Girls Club

Keith Hennessy: So, just tell me your name and what your job here is.

Linda Escobedo: Okay. My name is Linda Escobedo. I am a cultural art instructor.

KH: You were just telling me about what effect Jump-Start is having in terms of you and some of your work here. I’m wondering if you could repeat some of that?

LE: I am getting experience from the staff in Jump-Start. They are giving me some ideas for the summer program and the drama part. That magic player, or whatever it is called, is very good because I am getting the kids to use their imaginations without seeing something. Their ideas they are giving me, I’m getting more experience and I’ll be a better staff with the children. I really like the magic tricks. I don’t think I’m going to be able to do that, but I’m noticing the kids are very interested in doing something simple, like making a little scarf disappear, or a pretend thumb. All the experience that they have they are giving me. I am getting the gold nuggets, and I am going to use them in the future, especially in the summer.

KH: What is the plan behind this program? How long are the Jump-Start artists going to be coming in here to the Boys Club?

LE: My understanding is until May. They have different activities and different staff. Now we are into the drama, but at first we were in photography. The kids made books. A story book out of pictures. We went for a nature walk. That was their own book. They created their own book with their own pictures. Now we are into drama, and it is my understanding that we are going to go into dancing. The kids don’t have any opportunity, because they are disadvantaged children. Their opportunity is coming to the club and I appreciate that. Maybe I’ll start learning about doing some dancing, maybe for the summer.

KH: How long have you worked here?

LE: Two and a half years. I appreciate it cause I am getting my experience also. The kids are having an opportunity. They are of all ages. We have foster children, care children, children from the barrio. It is a good opportunity for all of us to learn from each other.

KH: The whole region that this club is in, it is a lot different from King William or this other neighborhood where Jump-Start tries to do their theater projects. For me it is interesting to see them trying to reach out to different areas in the city.

LE: Some of these children aren’t from the barrio. We have some from the north side, we have some from the south side and they come over here. It is because they are a part of the program. The foster program or the CARE program. They have the opportunity to interact with other children, to have a so called "normal" life with the other children. They know how to interact with kids. It is a good opportunity. We are their mothers, their counselors, their friends. The best thing I have seen is just being a good listener to a lot of these children.

Interview with Dianne Monroe, Jump-Start company member and teacher in Healing Arts Program at Calderón.

Keith Hennessy: Just tell me about this specific program, what’s going on, how it got started.

Dianne Monroe: Okay. This program started in October and it is part of a major collaboration with a large number of social-service agencies. The major impetus was to use the arts to provide healing for children who have been sexually abused. What we do here is that the children who are clients of the various social institutions come here on Saturday mornings where they are mainstreamed into peer activities. We have here children who are a part of that program as part of a group with other children who frequent the center. Also there are a large number of children here who are in foster care for one reason or another who come here on Saturday mornings. Hence, one time we had to do a hand poll. The kids are either in foster care, the CARE program or both. Some of them are just area residents. This is like the west side, which is a poor, Mexican-American side of town. So that is the grouping of kids that we have here.

KH: And what is the vision of the program? How long do you intend to be here?

DM: The vision of the program is actually pretty exciting. We hope that it is going to be long-term. You probably know already that one of the things Jump-Start places emphasis on is long-term collaborations and actually the long term benefits of the arts for social skills, for academic skills, critical thinking, etc, etc. So we anticipate this being a multiyear collaboration. In San Antonio, there has been some research done by a woman named Sue Kellogg, I think is her name, I might not have that right. In tracking of children that have been sexually abused, what is the healing process and what are the long-term ramifications. Often times what happens is that a child would be in a short-term therapy relationship and then turned loose. Then a couple years down the road, oftentimes when the child hits puberty, there are complications associated with the previous trauma. So, the idea for the social agencies is actually to collaborate on providing and tracking social services to those children and be able to prevent or catch those problems as they emerge. Since counseling is typically a short-term thing, one of the long-term things they want to do with that is establish relationships through other vehicles such as this one, so that the child can be in an environment with adults that know them and things can be tracked. Actually, there is the potential in participating in this path-breaking research. Apparently this doctor that put together all of this stuff was like kind of first of its kind theory in the country. That’s really exciting.

KH: What do you think are the biggest problems facing this program?

DM: We had talked before at Jump-Start about trying to change the venue. The drop-in nature of it makes it — every week we have new kids. We might have kids that aren’t actually CARE kids. I personally feel it is not going to be possible to establish a safe and trusting place where one can really do the healing that arts can do in that setting. Right now we are providing fun, maybe new ideas. Challenging, critical thinking and social skills but we are not really doing the heart of this program. We kind of kicked around what else could be done. That’s kind of to me the biggest problem.

KH: Getting more control over a particular venue and who can come, the drop in nature?

DM: For an example, in one sense there is nothing wrong with a program that does arts programming on a drop-in basis for kids who can benefit from the service. All the kids who walk in here can benefit from that service. It’s just how do we do what? The theory that got this collaboration together says what we are really supposed to be doing.

KH: I’m interested in how do you think being here in this community with these kids, you know in a different neighborhood, how do you think that is going to affect your work personally? How will it effect Jump-Start’s work and vision?

DM: In almost all of our arts-in-education work, we are working with a similar population. You know, all our schools are inner-city schools, so that is the general population target. That’s not a new target. I think what this program does is enable us to branch out into another aspect. In the schools, we focus on using art kind of integrated with curriculum, critical thinking skills, team building and frankly pushing a politically progressive agenda, which we intend to do here as well. Here we are more looking at how can we develop the arts to address, I want to say, serious wounds and trauma. I think a lot of the kids in the schools have parallel or identical wounds that we might not be aware of. I see it kind of as an opportunity to develop in a whole new area, but the area doesn’t have a whole lot to do with the neighborhood or population. Does that make sense?

KH: Yeah. Is there a way where your exposure, whether it is at this program or any other program, to these kids, to these issues. is that changing you in any way? What is happening to you in it?

DM: Okay. I think there is much more potential for me to learn. It gets back to what this setting should be, as opposed to what it is. For the past three summers, this is personally, I have done a workshop with the YMCA that is really similar. It is a similar population of kids, it’s a drop-in, kids come in and out. It is not the same particulars. We did a training, a bunch of us in recognizing sexually abused signs, which hasn’t been such an issue here but was a really useful training. Particularly because my previous training has been writing. Before any of this training in Atlanta, I had a situation where two of my students did what is called an outcry in their writing. And it was like, what am I supposed to do? Particularly with writing because it is so personal. So, the training was really useful. So, to answer your question, ultimately I’m sure it will take me in a new direction. It hasn’t really yet because of the same problem we are talking about.

Interview with Joe Rendon and Matthew Edwards, two youths, after viewing Sterling Houston’s "La Frontera," performed at Calderón Boys & Girls Club.

Keith Hennessy: What’s your name?

Joe Rendon: Joe Rendon.

KH: And what did you think of the show?

JR: I thought it was really great, and everybody should be like them. They shouldn’t make fun of black people, because they are really nice people. When we get to know each other, we could be friends.

KH: Have you seen other plays like this before?

JR: No, I haven’t.

KH: What was special about this play that you are going to remember?

JR: Friendship that they had and how they got to be best friends.

KH: Okay, thanks. And what’s your name?

Matthew Edwards: Matthew Edwards.

KH: And Matthew, what did you think about the play?

ME: I think it was pretty cool.

KH: What are some things that you remember? Some images, or music, or anything...

ME: That sometimes it might start off that bad and you might not like people, but as soon as you get to know them, you find the truth of them, what they really are like.

KH: What did you think about all the singing?

ME: I think it was pretty cool.

KH: Have you seen other plays as part of this program?

ME: This is the first one I’ve seen like it.

KH: Would you like to bring more here?

ME: Yeah. I think so.

Interview with Ramiro Nava, social director, Calderón Boys & Girls Club, after viewing Sterling Houston’s "La Frontera"

Keith Hennessy: Just tell me your name.

Ramiro Nava: My name is Ramiro Nava and I am the social director here at Calderón Boys & Girls Club.

KH: So, Jump-Start came here today and first did a workshop, then there was this play. What do you think is the merit of them coming here?

RN: The value of them coming out here is that it helps these kids. It brings things to life — day-to-day life. It relates to them, because the language that they were using and the way they were acting really relates to their family, their upbringing, really driving home the point. Us here as staff people, we tell them all the time. But when they really get to see that there can be some comedy, but yet some realism to what’s going on. So, yeah the play was very beneficial in that regards.

KH: What do you think are the obstacles in trying to drive home a message about diverse people trying to live together? What do you see as the challenge or what makes it difficult even though they hear the message in a variety of ways?

RN: I think the difficult thing is that we have to break the tradition. The bad tradition. We’ve all grown up with these stereotypes that have been put into place with us since birth. The difficult thing is trying to break that. Distrusting what mama used to say or what daddy used to say and really coming to life. Catching them at a younger age helps out. It really does. I feel like that is the difficult part. It’s not who are we to come in and tell them what to do, it’s can they trust us as much as they trust their parents or what they have been brought up with. That may be the difficult part.

KH: Do you think that is what the play was trying to do?

RN: Yeah. I think so. I think the play really focused and really grabbed their attention because it was like a family-type atmosphere. What they are used to. What they see in a day-to-day basis. I think the play is going to be successful in that way, as far as what you grow up with, it is easy to change. There are things that can be done.

Interview with Camille Bright, CARE Coordinator and Healing Arts Coordinator at Calderón Boys & Girls Club

Camille Bright: My name is Camille Bright and I am the CARE coordinator and the Healing Arts coordinator. Basically what I do is provide programs for children who have been sexually abused.

Keith Hennessy: Talk to me about the partnership you have with Jump-Start. What is exciting about it for you?

CB: The partnership that we have is Healing Arts and it is absolutely amazing. They bring in professionals from the community who are teaching the kids anything from visual arts, to theater performances, to kite making, to cultural issues. They are learning a lot about their identity and the communities that they live in. I think that is the theme right now, communities and our role. How we all fit together. Watching the kids go through that and seeing them grow and change and how it is helping them heal is absolutely amazing. The artists are wonderful.

KH: Have you ever seen a project like this before?

CB: No. I’ve never seen a project where a theater company is coming in and working with disadvantaged youth. And also incorporating the healing process. I’ve heard of art therapy. But this is more of a group-based, community-site based and it is unique.

KH: What is your vision for the collaboration? What do you hope for?

CB: I hope it will continue. It just needs to be incorporated as something that the Boys & Girls Club offers. A branch off that is training for the Boys & Girls Club employees. The cultural-arts coordinator, the education specialist they are all learning. They are learning about art. They are learning about theater. They are learning about things that they are going to take on to these kids that maybe they didn’t have before. I see them educating the employees and then just staying here and being a part of the Boys & Girls Club.

KH: What do you think some of the challenges that the program is going to face, or already is?

CB: The biggest challenge is that the children are cyclical, I guess. They don’t really come all the time. With the artists, I’m not sure if they are used to developing programs when kids are in and out. It is kind of hard to develop programs when one week you have two kids and the next week you have 20 kids. Dealing with that nature of the kids and the community is the hardest thing.

Interview with Lupita Garcia and Brenda La Garza, Delta Phi Omega Sorority, doing community service at Calderón, after viewing Sterling Houston’s "La Frontera" and participating in the accompanying workshop on prejudice

Keith Hennessy: So, tell me your name and tell me what you are doing here today.

Lupita Garcia: I am Lupita Garcia and I am from Delta Phi Omega Sorority and we are here doing community service for the day.

KH: Have you had any experience of Jump-Start before today, before this workshop?

LG: No, actually I didn’t.

KH: So, how did you find today?

LG: It was good. It was fun. It was exciting. I liked it, I really did. It was something different.

KH: How about in terms of them bringing their theater into the community, what do you think about that?

LG: I think that’s a really good thing. I think they are doing kids a lot of different issues that they don’t get to deal with at home, with their parents, who are a little bit closed-minded. I think this gives them an opportunity to see through a different window.

KH: What do you think are some of the challenges they face trying to do this kind of programming in this kind of environment?

LG: Actually trying to reach different children from different cultures. I think that is their biggest challenge, actually making them understand and see the difference between them.

KH: What do you think of theater as opposed to the workshop?

LG: I think that is a good way for them to express their feelings. Basically kids see, that’s the way they understand. Actually doing a play, I think it is much easier for them to understand what is going on. They could recognize the situations and actually relate to that.

KH: What about the workshops? What was good for you, experiencing it with the kids at the same time?

LG: They have really good icebreakers. Really good. They were actually a lot of fun. I think that kind of loosened up everybody after that.

KH: So, tell me your name and what brought you here today.

Brenda La Garza: Well, my name is Brenda La Garza and I am pledging Delta Phi Omega from UTSA in San Antonio. I’ve always done community service since I was in middle school. I’ve never heard of Jump-Start before. It is really interesting how a play can bring out so much of what people feel inside, what they’ve gone through in their lives. It brings out a lot of interaction. Personally talking about all those situations, especially with racism and prejudice, it lets the students know exactly that everyone is in the same situation. Everyone feels the same way and have gone through it before. You can’t really explain with words how it feels to interact with students like this. It really is heartwarming when people open up. It makes them understand about everybody’s differences. This group, I mean Jump-Start, is really good. It really benefits the students. I think it is a good idea.

KH: As someone who has a lot of experience doing community service, what do you think is not getting done in community service? What would you like to see? Are there other things that you could imagine an art group doing?

BLG: I don’t see a lot of art going on. I mean coloring, painting everybody does that. Music, playwrights, all that stuff, the students can really interact with each other.

KC: It’s not just drawing a book. Everyone can actually interact together.

BLG: It’s really good. It brings up a lot of people from different races, different cultures. It’s really good. It is for people of all ages and I kind of wish every Boys and Girls Club, every community service had that. That’s really hard. Maybe research like this will help it out a lot.

Keith Hennessy is a Canadian-born, interdisciplinary artist choreographer and community arts organizer living in community in San Francisco. Hennessy's solo work has been produced throughout the U.S., in Canada, New Zealand and Australia, including several gay and lesbian performance festivals. Since 1998, he has performed with Cahin-Caha, cirque bâtard, a French/American, mongrel circus based in France. Hennessy was a member of the performance collective Core and was a founding member and principle collaborator in Contraband, a San Francisco-based performance company. Hennessy co-directs 848 Community Space. He is a member of Alternate ROOTS, a service organization for community-based artists, and serves radical cultural agendas as a consultant, director, teacher, curator and agitator.

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Carpetbag | Cornerstone | Dell'Arte | Jump-Start
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