Chicago Magazine - November, 2002

Acting Out:
Mining their lives for stories, teens in the Albany Park Theater Project have created a poignant program for the Humanities Festival

"The creation of a piece always begins with a story," says 17-year-old Marta Popadiak, an ensemble member of the Albany Park Theater Project. Her story - an intimate portrait of her mother, a Polish immigrant who left strife-torn Gdansk in her 20s - is a cornerstone of the group's newest production, a dramatized collage of stories about teens and their mothers, set to open this month during the Chicago Humanities Festival.

The production, as yet untitled, springs from the lives of the theatre company's 35 teenage members, who are the sons and daughters of Albany Park's largely working-class and immigrant community. The company was founded in 1996 to create works that "bring the audience deep into people's lives," says co-director David Feiner.

Popadiak's story revolves around the aftermath of her father's sudden death, when her mother cleaned houses and careened through eight years of alcoholism. Crystal Pronos, 17, draws her story from a year she spent living with her estranged mother in another state. "I had been told all my life that she was a bad person," Pronos says. "I wanted to see if everything people said about her was true."

Michael Nguyen, 17, is the spitting image of his mother, a refugee from Vietnam who "didn't measure up to what I thought a mother should be," he says. Nguyen tells how, over time, being compared to her became a source of pride.

All three storytellers agree that seeking to understand their mothers' lives has helped them make sense of their own. "My mother's experience made her stronger and they made me stronger," says Popadiak. "I believe that life is hard, but you learn from it. My mom is a true testament to that." - Mary Abowd