Homeless women act out real-life roles in play at Bethlehem Haven

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Homeless women act out real-life roles in play at Bethlehem Haven

Wednesday, September 16, 1998

By Caroline Abels, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

Forget Stanislavsky.

When you're homeless and recovering from drug addiction, you can find acting inspiration on the street

Jo'et Giorgianni, left, and Debbe Brown are relieved after their first performance of "It Could Never Happen to Me," a play about the plight of homeless women. (Martha Rial, Post-Gazette)

At least, that's where Debbe Brown and Dianne Cunningham found it. As the two women stood outside Bethlehem Haven, the Downtown shelter where they live, talking about the play they were going to be in, a well-dressed woman walked by and sneered at them.

It was fitting, considering that Brown and Cunningham play wealthy women who look down at the homeless.

"She stuck her nose so far in the air," Cunningham said.

"Uh-huh, and we thought, that's just how we're going to play the part," Brown added.

With such experiences in mind, Brown and Cunningham joined five other Bethlehem Haven women yesterday to perform "It Could Never Happen to Me," a 20-minute play that looks at homelessness through the perspective of the poor, the rich, shopkeepers, counselors and people who think they could never end up on the streets.

Director and AmeriCorps volunteer Laura Conkle, left, gives Kisha Augustine ideas on how to develop her character during play rehearsal at Bethlehem Haven, a Downtown women's shelter. (Martha Rial, Post-Gazette)

The play, written by Suzannah Neal, a former resident of the Haven, was directed by Laura Conkle, an AmeriCorps volunteer who has been working at the shelter.

At a rehearsal last week, the women said they appreciated the opportunity to show an audience what it's like to be homeless.

"We want to show that we're human beings with feelings and that we want to be treated as equals," Cunningham said.

Many had never acted before, some only in grade school. But the job was made easier by the link between their roles and their lives.

"I not only play these parts, I've lived these parts," said Kisha Augustine, 31, who played a homeless woman and an alcoholic and is herself homeless and a recovering alcoholic.

Cunningham, who came from a well-to-do family, said she used to believe homelessness could never happen to her.

"People say it to me now, but I say, 'Well, you're only a paycheck away.' "

But the women didn't just play themselves. They also had to inhabit the minds of the very people who look down on them.

Cunningham, who was rejected for a job recently because she had no address to put on her application, played a woman who discourages a shopkeeper from hiring a homeless person. "What would your shop look like if one of those dirty homeless women was in there?" her character asks.

Dianne Cunningham, left, Nicole Gordon and five other women made up the cast for the play on the homeless. (Martha Rial, Post-Gazette)

At the end of yesterday's noon performance (there was another performance in the evening), the audience of about 75 gave the women a standing ovation, and the women beamed as they took their bows.

"They own this play," Conkle said. "It's theirs."

The play was the first the Haven has staged, but there is interest in doing more.

And the confidence the women gained from the days they spent preparing to get up in front of an audience could mean that the next time they perform, they will have new life experiences to draw on.

In "It Could Never Happen to Me," Augustine was inspired by her role as a drug and alcohol counselor.

"That's what I want to be," she said.