Art That’s More than Just Pretty

In a similar vein, but on a larger scale, the Plymouth Christian Youth Center operates its summer Theater Arts Institute for Children. PCYC has been around since 1954 and occupies a spacious, well-kept, well-lit building that’s an oasis in an otherwise rundown area. PCYC runs an alternative high school and offers after-school programs for kindergarteners through twelfth graders, as well as social-service programs. Twenty-two years ago, the Wheelock Whitney Foundation gave PCYC the Capri Theater, a defunct movie house/theater on West Broadway. PCYC executive director Anne Little Long realized the theater’s potential and began renting out the space. She also launched the Theater Arts Institute and hired professional actors to work with the kids.

Twelve-year-old Alfred Hartwell says performing onstage at the Capri is “like winning the Super Bowl!” Hartwell moved here from south Minneapolis with his family a couple of years ago. “This neighborhood is OK because it’s silent in the morning, but not at night,” he says. “You either hear fire trucks, police [sirens], or ambulances every night.”

“Every night,” concurs his friend Sharay Ayers, thirteen, who has attended the Theater Arts Institute the past three summers. She and Hartwell come here every day after school and stay until their parents pick them up at six o’clock. Ayers giggles easily, but is solemn when she talks about what goes on outside of PCYC. She used to live in Burnsville and is still trying to get used to the nonstop nightly noise. Waking up to gunshots is not uncommon.

About forty-five kids participate in the Theater Arts Institute each summer, working with playwright Gavin Lawrence, Penumbra Theatre company members Austene Van, Kevin West, T. Mychael Rambo, Dennis Spears, and other top-notch Twin Cities actors. The kids are schooled in singing, dancing, and acting, and make their own costumes, props, and sets.

Last year’s musical, Once Upon a Summertime, was written especially for the group by Lawrence. Putting together the final product took three weeks of intensive acting, choreography, and music rehearsals. Ayers says she almost lost her part to Hartwell because she wasn’t working hard enough. “Mr. Gavin says that to everyone,” says Hartwell. Ayers giggles. Both say the show was “awesome” and that the theater program built up their confidence and made it easier for them to talk to people. “If I don’t become an actress,” says Ayers, “I want to be a vet.” Hartwell says he would like to act professionally too, but first he wants to play in the NFL. His third choice is to become a professional basketball player.

As a Northside resident, Van views her work with PCYC as an opportunity for her to give back to her community. “I know from personal experience how art can save a life. It saved mine,” she says. When Van was growing up, many of her peers became addicts, gang members, and teenage parents. “At PCYC, teachers don’t focus on the disciplines of the arts alone,” she says, “they also concentrate on teaching self-discipline. When our children have no outlet, no safe medium for which they can creatively and positively express their fears, concerns, questions, pain, anger, frustration, issues, or even rage, they will turn to negative ways of expressing these things. Theater kept my mind too busy and my body too tired to get into trouble.”

Ayers and Hartwell understand what’s on the line for them. “I had an experience with a gunshot,” Hartwell says. “One day, I saw a car doing a donut and this man got out of his car and started shooting straight up into the air! My dad—I don’t know why he did it—opened the door and told him to stop it.” Whenever Hartwell sees a slow-moving car coming down the street with its windows cracked, he hides behind the bushes. The police, he adds, always take a long time to arrive. At best, they’re two hours late; at worst, they never show up.