By Darlene Donloe
Contributing Author
LOS ANGELES — The connection between police and the neighborhood — any neighborhood — could be tenuous at occasions.
A kind of relationships is the main focus of a groundbreaking program that’s going down by way of the Fountain Theatre, which has joined forces with Design for Sharing, UCLA’s arts schooling program for college students in kindergarten by way of the twelfth grade, to showcase the culminating efficiency of “Strolling the Beat,” the theater’s transformative community-building program that sees cops and teenagers working collectively to create theater.
UCLA’s Heart for the Artwork of Efficiency gives public college college students from throughout Los Angeles entry to the performing arts, each at UCLA and of their lecture rooms.
“Strolling the Beat: Los Angeles 2024: Within the Crossfire” takes place at 7 p.m., Sept. 22 on the UCLA Nimoy Theater. It’s a new multimedia work created by 15 teenagers and eight cops.
A free pupil matinee will comply with Sept. 23, permitting 250 college students from throughout Los Angeles County to expertise the completed work and speak with the solid and creators.
Directed by Theo Perkins and written by Fountain Theatre Arts Schooling Supervisor Nathan James, “Within the Crossfire” was devised by college students and cops primarily based on their writing, conversations and improvisations concerning the results of gun violence on them, personally and inside their communities.
The present options excerpts by facilitator and director Angela Kariotis and the 2024 “Strolling the Beat” NJ Ensemble.
“This was a collaborative course of,” mentioned James, who wrote this system by observing. “I sat in on workshops run by instructing artists. I watched them information the scholars and cops by way of community-building workouts. I watched the method.
“I took plenty of the monologues and journal entries between college students and officers and created a narrative out of them. I put some construction to the tales. I took what they devised and I realized the cruel results of this new world on these college students’ vanity.”
James mentioned one of many points he wrote about was the shooter drills that college students expertise in colleges.
“At a number of the colleges, a number of drills are finished to the purpose that college students now not take them critically,” mentioned James, who has held the place of arts schooling supervisor on the Fountain for a 12 months. “Since gun violence is our theme this 12 months, I wrote a bit about what would occur if the shooter drill was actual.”
James mentioned he was “stunned” by a number of the issues he realized from each college students and cops.
“I used to be very a lot stunned,” he mentioned. “I’m a Black man in America. I’ve been assaulted by cops on many events. We stroll into this with our nerves already churning.
“However I realized that the cops expertise nerve-wracking identical to we do once they stroll into sure conditions. ‘Strolling the Beat’ humanizes everybody. The aim is to humanize one another.”
James is aware of and writes of what he speaks. He tells the story of the time he was driving in his hometown of Pittsburgh and was pulled over and surrounded by a number of squad vehicles.
“They dragged me out of the automobile,” James mentioned. “They put me on the bottom and put a gun to my head and informed me if I moved, they’d blow my head off.”
James, who was a spoken phrase poet and actor on the time, mentioned he informed the cops that in the event that they needed to know who he was, his face was on a billboard simply across the nook.
“They despatched somebody to look,” he mentioned. “When it was verified, they bought me off the bottom, brushed me off, and informed me it was a mistaken identification. I mentioned nothing. One officer then informed me to remain out of bother. Why would he say that to me? I got here into ‘Strolling the Beat’ with my trauma.”
James believes there’s a “Huge downside with policing.”
“We’re being policed by individuals who don’t know us,” he mentioned. “Relationships have to be constructed between the cops and the communities they serve. They should get to know the neighborhood they serve. If we’ve got strangers coming into our neighborhood with a common mindset — that when the issues start, everyone seems just like the enemy — there’ll all the time be battle.”
James, who obtained a level in Africana Research from the College of Pittsburgh, and has a grasp’s of tremendous arts from Penn State, mentioned he would encourage everybody to see the present.
“Individuals ought to come simply to see the world these children are being pressured to develop up in,” James mentioned. “They need to come to see the opportunity of what the neighborhood may very well be. We’re making a imaginative and prescient of what policing might appear to be sooner or later.”
Pupil contributors this 12 months signify 5 native excessive colleges, together with Hollywood Excessive Faculty, Valley Oaks Heart for Enriched Research, Orthopaedic Hospital Medical Magnet Excessive Faculty, Ramón C. Cortines Faculty of Visible and Performing Arts and Hawthorne Excessive Faculty.
Now in its fifth 12 months on the Fountain, “Strolling the Beat” gives a life-changing expertise for underserved youth.
Based by the Elizabeth Youth Theater Ensemble and led by govt and inventive director Theo Perkins, contributors within the hands-on program are guided by Kariotis and instructing artists ReSheda Terry and Alex Ubokedom.
“Strolling the Beat” supporters embody the Araxia and Vladimir Buckhantz Basis, Mary Jo and David Volk, the Audrey and Sydney Irmas Charitable Basis, Maggi Phillips, Jennifer Simchowitz, Anne-Marie Spataru, Jason Zelin and Allison Stein, and the Los Angeles County Division of Probation.
The UCLA Nimoy Theater, is situated at 1262 Westwood Blvd., Los Angeles. Admission is free, however reservations are required (topic to availability).
Parking is $3 (flat charge) after 5 p.m. within the construction situated at 10866 Wilshire Blvd. For info: 323-663-1525 or www.FountainTheatre.com.
Darlene Donloe is a contract reporter for Wave Newspapers who covers South Los Angeles. She could be reached at ddonloe@gmail.com.
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