Theater As an Act of Citizenship: Thoughts on the Los Angeles Poverty Department

October 2002

The Los Angeles Poverty Department is a grassroots ensemble theater providing a forum and platform for community growth and participation among the homeless and very poor people located in the Skid Row district of Los Angeles. According to founder and artistic director John Malpede, who began the company back in 1985, its original goals were "to create community in Skid Row and get the voice of Skid Row out to the rest of Los Angeles and beyond." Malpede and his ensemble have spent the more than 15 years since doing exactly that – building community and getting the voice of the poor and homeless spoken, sometimes within Skid Row, sometimes as far beyond Skid Row as Cleveland and Chicago in the U.S. and Amsterdam and other cities of Europe. The interviews compiled in this project by Ferdinand Lewis offer insight into the drives, passions, successes and challenges of this determined theater effort. Lewis’ profile of LAPD and his reflections on the company bring a compassionate and inquisitive focus to much of the facts and opinions offered in these interviews. I am left, after reading this material closely, with awe for the artistic vision, the heroic determination and the practical know-how that undergirds this ensemble and its successes. I am also left with the disturbing fear that people will easily trivialize this ensemble simply because they are centered in a community that is, itself, marginalized and invisible to much of society. What does the Los Angeles Poverty Department do and what value does that have?

Malpede explains simply that "on one level the strategy is to make art." He goes on,

It was a pretty extreme approach. I would cast [roles in the plays] to see who can grow [as opposed to who is stereotypically suited to the part], and to offer opportunities if people wanted to expand. There are so many examples in 20th century art of breaking down the barriers between the professional and amateur. Everyone supports community-based art but it's [also] a code word for bad art. I felt like we were always fighting that. In many cases, we confounded those expectations by producing something that was undeniably good art.

Project interviewer Ferdinand Lewis describes LAPD’s work as

gritty and artistically risky, often making powerful use of the contexts in which the pieces were performed. The work isn't crafted for charm, but rather to accurately reflect what Malpede calls "the wild energy of the neighborhood." There is no fixed artistic style for the ensemble, and, since he is simply trying to make the best art possible within a community context, Malpede has always allowed the material to decide the shape of the piece, rather than being guided by audience – or funder – expectations.

Workshops and community feedback sessions are integral to the production work of this company. Often material is developed through community workshops. Emmanuel Deleage describes how one show evolved during workshops intended to help abusers accomplish effective transitions during recovery. The material of the show was initially articulated and then rehearsed in the workshop environment. Lewis states in his field notes: "The aesthetic lines that separate theatrical and actual community interaction are intentionally and vigorously blurred. LAPD’s research, development, and production style rely on an almost continual exchange of feedback with the community."

So, within Malpede’s simple statement of a strategy to "make art," there is a virtual weather system of interchange, dialogue and inquiry in the community that surrounds the ensemble. Of course, as Lewis points out, "themes and subjects are always immediately [relevant] to the lives and experiences of Skid Row residents." He adds, "the ensemble’s artistic approach has been primarily improvisational." The results are that the members’ own experiences form the center of the art they make.

In the case of "Agents and Assets," the show being performed at the time of these project interviews, LAPD’s usual improvisational format was set aside for an entirely scripted piece. According to Lewis, the "script" was the literal transcript from a Congressional hearing on CIA involvement in crack cocaine sales in California. Lewis, who attended a performance, explains that

long passages of dry, undramatic material were delivered by actors unused to either memorization or the delivery of such material. Text and context were clearly more important elements of the production than, say, performance technique. For the audience, it would have been difficult to overlook the irony of hearing the words of educated, skilled politicians spoken by actors who at some point in their lives were casualties of the Wars on Drugs. I spoke with audience members who were moved by the production, and they all agreed that it was the act of witnessing an event so fraught with contextual weight that produced emotion in them, pathos for a plight, and not necessarily with the performer's character.

Malpede’s stated goal of getting the voice of Skid Row out to the rest of Los Angeles and beyond was certainly achieved in the bitter irony Lewis describes.

The impulse to make art this way, to reach into the community surrounding the artist in order to create the ensemble and find material, leads inevitably to the formation of collaborative partnerships. However, in this case, the partnership building came first. Speaking of his own experiences starting LAPD, Malpede says,

You have to be respectful of and take advantage of the resources that are there. I started [by] volunteering for activists and lawyers who were active in the community. I had to learn to be in that community, how to behave, and also learn the lay of the land. I kept redefining what was most important to me. Initially it was about helping out people who are already there. You have to keep your ear to the ground and be responsive to what’s there. I think a lot of decisions are practical responses to what’s in front of your face, trying to find the form for what’s there.

Malpede also understands the time it takes to work this way. He recalls, "I was offered a job as a welfare advocate, I was hired by the Legal Aid Society of Los Angeles. … We’d written a grant for workshops. … I was going to make a piece about neighborhood issues. I started doing the workshops and it was a year before anything came out of it."

What value has this strategy? What consequence? On one level, the evidence offered in this study reveals that LAPD’s long-term partnerships with other Skid Row organizations have resulted in overt change in the community. For example, when LAPD originally formed its partnership with SRO Housing Corporation "there were no SROs [single-room-occupancy hotels for the homeless] back then, they were all owned by private slum lords," says Malpede. "Now there are over 50 hotels [transformed out of old derelict buildings] that help Skid Row." LAPD and SRO Housing are pioneers in building this community.

On another level, LAPD itself has changed. No longer the greenhorn, at this juncture, LAPD has achieved a position to serve as a guide, an elder member of the community, helping new organizations find the lay of the land and learn how to behave to accomplish positive intentions. The adjustments, "acculturation" as Lewis calls it, required of newcomers to Skid Row can be learned by people who would do this work and, in turn, they can be taught to others. The relationship between LAPD and Side Street Projects, its partner for "Agents and Assets," outlines this mentoring function that LAPD provides.

Among the ensemble members, community partners and audience members that Lewis interviewed in this project, there are many perspectives and experiences, but all confirm LAPD’s success in reaching its original goal of creating community through theater. Some refer directly to performances that were effective or moving for them. Others speak of how the success of LAPD has led to the creation of other organizations. LAPD is recognized as having inspired and/or assisted in the creation of several organizations, such as the Downtown Musicians Alliance and Artists In Recovery.

Ultimately, what LAPD makes, by way of product, is art that in itself, in the making of it and in the performing of it, creates, as Jeff Gilbert says, "culture and community and identity" where there was none recognized or claimed before. Organizations, people getting together to do something, whether to make plays or conduct workshops or just to learn from one another, are functional elements of community. The plight of the homeless, regardless of cause or circumstance, is the very absence of a sense of belonging and a sense of self-identity in the world. The interviews in this project attest to the abilities of this ensemble to accomplish what would seem to be the very deepest goals of our society: to create community where there was none, to create citizens where there were only survivors.

Tony Parker, a longtime ensemble member, speaks about his personal growth. He says, "It’s helped me in terms of just relating to people. I used to be extremely introvert. … But what this has done, it’s braved me up in a lot of ways in terms of expressing myself."

Jeff Gilbert speaks of the transformative act of handing house keys to someone who has had no home. A similar transformation can and does happen when LAPD lets personal successes lead to leadership functions within the ensemble. Malpede’s vision and expertise is knowing the importance of sharing organizational leadership tasks and being able to transfer those tasks successfully to those attracted to his ensemble.

So, how to reckon these successes? A woman named Denise H., a new member of the LAPD ensemble, makes one of the most startling observations in these interviews. About the ultimate value of publicly provided assistance she says, "You know these shelters and the recovery, the sobriety, stuff like that, that they have, but are they really, do they really care? What help are they giving? They aren’t giving me any help. Now, I appreciate what they’re doing but then to me personally, personally, my personal opinion on it is, it’s to keep their foot on the top of me."

Denise H. is not the first person to come to this kind of conclusion, whatever its accuracy. Whole books and political careers have been built on the question of the difference between good-willed control of the poor and liberation of the poor. Nonetheless, Denise H. articulates her own tangible and immediate sense of the control of state agencies and programs.

Furthermore, Denise H. is finding her own voice, a voice she didn’t know she had, by speaking in a public environment where other people, familiar to her, let her know she’s been heard, The work of the LAPD has not simply been to offer Denise H. a role in a play. The LAPD, with its myriad partners, make it possible for Denise H. to formulate her own ideas about where she is living and how she would like to live with the other people in Skid Row.

LAPD’s ensemble members make plays together, yes, but coming out of the creative process, they make their own organizations together. They identify their needs and develop their own agendas on how to satisfy those needs. In this realm, even if only for moments, they are no longer in the wicked loop of the dependent needy. For moments, the crushing brutality that exists in our society at the very bottom of the economic scale is being vanquished, not by give-aways but by the creative processes of making art. These moments are precious and valuable, for they hold the potential of breaking the cycle of dependency.

Ultimately, I think it is not possible to separate the impulse to make art, the very best possible, from the impulse to create culture, community and identity. I believe this is fundamentally true of all art. It is certainly and most consciously true of the art made by LAPD. I think the effort to separate these elements is destructive and ultimately cynical. The act of putting images of human behavior on stage for an audience to recognize and reflect upon is the act of theater. This act is intrinsically socio/political because the basic agreement between performance and audience, presentation and acceptance, spontaneously creates culture, community and identity. When theater is effective, this is what it does.

The theater artist who claims to shun the socio/political in favor of the so-called entertainment value of theater is simply denying these elemental aspects of the art. Likewise, the potential theater supporter, who claims a need to substantiate the capacity of good theater with quantitative data demonstrating evidence of social change in its audience, is at least in the same state of denial, if not willfully using false disciplines to avoid or deny support for excellent theatrical accomplishments. I know of no funding source that asks for quantitative evidence from our leading cultural institutions proving that audiences are more solidly entrenched in middle-class behavior patterns as a result of their participation in a given season of plays. In those circles it is simply assumed that good theater is good for its audience. The problem seems to come when the direction of change is not toward the mainstream status quo.

Project interviewer Ferdinand Lewis is driven by this same need to wrestle with the socio/political nature of theater when he observes that LAPD and other grassroots theaters do not

necessarily have to effect measurable social change in order to be considered successful. In neighborhoods where most people have what they need to survive – and plenty of neighborhoods contain poverty yet fit that description – the change inspired by art may not have obvious political effect. … Grassroots theater is not "medicine," but is first and foremost about making art to engage an audience (though that is in itself a sort of political act).

To create art, community and citizens, LAPD is a citizen first. From the very moment of its conception, LAPD has been invested in doing what needs to be done in the Skid Row district of Los Angeles. Through John Malpede’s leadership, LAPD has partnered with social agencies, civic officials, arts groups and just about everyone who has a hand in the human endeavor of giving care to the needs of people in this most troubled part of the Los Angeles megalopolis. Like Michael Fields of The Dell’Arte Company (another ensemble interviewed in this project), John Malpede’s history is one of being open to what others might need to do, how others might see value in the work of LAPD. This kind of artistic citizenship requires the kind of flexibility learned in the Dell’Arte School for Physical Comedy by Marya Errin Jones, "trying to get a hold onto your own ideas, and claiming them whether they are right or wrong. Fighting for them. Not fighting each other, but fighting for the idea."

Referring to how these collaborations work, Emmanuel Deleage points out, "Any positive thing you bring in is welcomed. That’s how you attract partners." These are fundamental rules of good ensemble practice. They are also fundamental for good citizenship. LAPD is both an ensemble and a citizen. Its art is a coherent, informed and moving expression of its community. There is no distinction between the artistic and the political, between art and social engagement. Art is political. Art is social engagement.

The value of this art lies in this connection.

Robert H. Leonard is associate professor in the Department of Theatre Arts at Virginia Tech where he teaches directing and improvisation. He brings 30 years of experience as founding artistic director of the Road Company, a nationally recognized theater ensemble (1972-1998) based in Johnson City, Tennessee, which created and produced two dozen original plays reflecting the history and issues of the Upper Tennessee Valley and Central Appalachia. Leonard served as a site visitor for WagonBurner Theater Troop for "Performing Communities," and currently serves as a member of the national board of Theatre Communications Group.

References

All unattributed citations are from this research project and can be found in the online interviews of "Performing Communities: The Grassroots Ensemble Theater Research Project."

PERFORMING COMMUNITIES
Carpetbag | Cornerstone | Dell'Arte | Jump-Start
LAPD | Pregones | Roadside | WagonBurner
Commentaries

Original CAN/API publication: November 2002