Chicago Tribune - Thursday, May 13, 1999

Albany Park group learns acting isn't acting tough

By Connie Lauerman - Tribune Staff Writer

It was spring break, a time when most teenagers probably were enjoying their leisure. But the young people who are part of the Albany Park Theater Project were hard at work rehearsing in a gymnasium at Christ Evangelical Lutheran Church on Wilson Avenue.

The play they were bringing to life wasn't written by Shakespeare of O'Neill or Ibsen. It was "After Michael," based on an event in the life of one of the company members whose dear friend was killed in street-gang gunfire meant for another boy.

"So, Rebecca, what's going on in this scene?" asked Laura Wiley, the troupe's co-director, addressing Maggie Popadiak by her character's name.

"I'm mad," Popadiak said fiercely, seething at the thought of George, who had been targeted for death but escaped with a leg wound simply because his friend Michael had traded seats with him as they drove around in George's car.

"How do you picture George?" Wiley probed. "You've conjured him up."

"He's selfish, a gangbanger type," Popadiak said. "Baggy jeans and beepers in his hair. An evil man. Oh, I hate him. I despise him. The worst thing I could ever imagine is George."

"Did you feel that way about George before Michael died?" asked David Feiner, the other director.

"No, he was just a gangbanger," Popadiak said.

"There must be something about George worth liking," Wiley said. Then she turned her attention to Jason Ayala, who plays George.

"George, you have a hard task. You have to be the incarnation of Rebecca's horrible imagining about you. You're an extreme of what Rebecca thinks of you. Don't be afraid to push it, but don't become a cartoon."

As they ran through a scene, Wiley and Feiner coached Popadiak, who was reading from her character's diary entries.

"Really spit at him through the way you talk," Feiner said.

"Stand up. Be 10 times angrier," Wiley said.

Then it was Ayala's turn to perform George's monologue. He was breezy, almost nonchalant.

"Hey, this is what went down. Me and that kid Michael, we were just driving around, right? Just going down to the KFC drive-through to get some chicken. Lucky I was in the passenger seat because BJ's crew, they came, they put 57 bullets into my friend Michael. Good thing I let Michael drive because those bullets were meant for me. And one of them actually hit me in the leg, man. Doctor says I'm gonna have to be in rehab for six months before I can walk right again. Six months! I say we hit them back and we hit them hard, you know what I'm saying?"

"How are you feeling?" Wiley asked.

"I'm pretty ticked off," Ayala said. "It was a pretty expensive car. I've got this limp thing, and, oh, yeah, my friend..."

"Try it again."

The next time Ayala was agitated, and he really hit the line about retaliation.

"That was very good," said Wiley.

"Really beautiful," said Feiner.

Feiner and Wiley launched the Albany Park Theater Project about two years ago. The couple, who met as graduate students at the Yale University School of Drama and then married, share a vision of theater as a community building tool.

"Art and theater are wonderfully powerful tools," said Feiner, 30. "Artmaking and theatermaking within communities is a terrific way for people to engage in dialogue with one another, and they're the kinds of dialogues they might not otherwise engage in."

Company members typically share stories of their own lives and stories they collect from their family members and other people in their neighborhoods.

That rich, real-life material is discussed in terms of characters and possibilities for staging. Then small groups of company members are assigned parts of a story to develop scenes. Improvised scenes may be revised until there's consensus about what approach to take and improvisations are codified into a working script.

In the case of "After Michael," Popadiak came up with the idea of using diary entries as a structure for telling the story. And Ayala improvised the gang member's monologue that was incorporated verbatim into the play.

"After Michael" is one of the five short plays and a dance piece that comprise "Beneath the Surface," the Albany Park Theater Project's spring performance, which will be staged Friday through Sunday and May 21-23 at the Eugene Field Park fieldhouse, 5100 N. Ridgeway Ave.

The other short plays include a harrowing tale of Mexicans sneaking across the border into the United States and a subsequent green-card marriage, and stories of a teenager committed to a mental institution, of the upheaval in a family after a father suddenly dies and of a young woman's awakening as a bisexual. The dance piece celebrates the community's ethnic vitality and expresses the desires of young people to retain their cultures as they mature.

"These stories express real life, and the performances are a way of making the community see what's going on in our lives as opposed to what they think is going on in our lives," said Ayala, 17, whose struggle with loneliness and thoughts of suicide were dramatized in the company's December performance, "Unheard Voices."

"For instance, the coming-out story, the suicide issue...a lot of adults think we shouldn't be exposed to material like this...I think that it's their responsibility to give us information like that."

As for the experience developing stories and acting, Ayala said, "In the piece with the gangbanger, I personally made up every word I'm saying. One day they had me work on the monologue and I though about what he would say and the voice he would be saying it in and I did it and they loved it and put it in the script.

"So it's very creative and it forces me to keep pushing myself to reach something more."

"Without APTP I'd be bored out of my mind," said Popadiak, 15, whose story about her family's experience after her father died is part of "Beneath the Surface."

"Some of the things in my story could have happened to anybody and people can relate to it. It deals with alcohol, family, tragedy. It teaches that families should always stick together, especially in hard times.

"Nobody else can take our stories. APTP has this great quality: We're very original."

As they prepared to launch the theater project, Feiner and Wiley met with community residents and leaders to gauge whether there was an interest in and a need for such a program.

As it turned out, "there was a dearth of opportunities both for arts activity in general and any kind of activities for teenagers," said Wiley, 33.

"We were conscious of being white people, outsiders coming in with a specific skill and a specific vision, although now we live in the community."

They scrounged for funds, initially getting money from some private family foundations and small grants from the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and the Chicago Department of Human Services. Albany Bank and Trust Co. was supportive as were many individuals.

"David and Laura brought a very positive energy to the community," recalled a social worker who used to work in the neighborhood and provided Feiner and Wiley with some of their initial contacts. "They followed up on every contact and went to every possible site that could be used. They got things happening there that never happened before."

"We knew them for a year when they were meeting at Horner Park," said Rev. Tom Terrell, pastor of Christ Evangelical Lutheran Church. "They were looking to move to some other areas to draw kids in who weren't willing to hike over to Horner, and we offered the space to them before they even asked because I felt confident in the people leading it."

Perhaps most important, Feiner and Wiley attracted teenagers. They distributed fliers and conducted recruiting workshops at schools, churches and parks. Once the project started, word of mouth took over and more than 20 teens are part of the core company. Newcomers are welcomed.

D.J. Narvaez, 17, said he was "dragged" to the Albany Park Theater Project by his Roosevelt High School classmate, Popadiak. "I went one day and I loved it," Narvaez said. "They're so nice, so warm. They treat you like family. They're very respectful. They understand what we go through."

Narvaez said the experience has "helped [him] to be a much better person.

"I don't judge anybody anymore," he said. "At APTP, when everybody started expressing the way they feel, it opens up your eyes. You see what people actually go through every day and what you don't notice about them. You can't judge a person by the way they look...I'm different now. I'm friendly."

"Laura and David give you roles that are challenging," said Nancy Casas, 17. "The roles can be so different from you that it changes you."

While Feiner and Wiley are warm and loving and always provide snacks at rehearsals, they're also professional and expect discipline.

At the first rehearsal for the May show, Feiner cautioned that the coming weeks would "require a real pooling of all of the talent and commitment we all have and our ability to work as a team. We all have to be where we're supposed to be when we're supposed to be there. We can't afford to lose rehearsals."

That's another way the project pays off. "Since my daughter joined APTP, she became more sure of herself and she's been able to make decisions with more responsibility," said Irma Sanchez about her daughter Lisa.

For Feiner and Wiley, the project infuses their lives with the kind of meaning that would make rave reviews in influential publications pale by comparison.

"I always had a fantasy about this seamless connection between who I am as a person and the work that I do," Wiley said.

"It's really exciting to finally be doing something that's creative, challenging and meaningful to the community at large."

Seating for "Beneath the Surface" is limited. For reservations call 773-866-0875.