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Stage Preview: Prime Stage actors get real gang training in 'The Outsiders'
Friday, April 20, 2001 By John Hayes, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
There's trouble in East Liberty. Two rival gangs are embroiled in a turf war that has already nearly killed a kid. They meet to settle things once and for all after hours at the East Liberty Presbyterian Church.
The gang leaders trade insults, tag each other brusquely on the chest and begin circling. Around them, subordinates jostle for position. In an instant, one kid is flattened with a cheap shot to the chin and the dangerous dance is about to explode.
"No, no," calls a voice from the sidelines. A tough black kid slips casually into the center of the circle of white. "This guy here, he wouldn't do that. Don't walk up with your hands down by your sides. You're with your hands up [he protects his face with two fists] so he don't catch you as you're coming, you know what I'm saying?"
The coach, Reese, is a streetwise 16-year-old who claims membership in a Pittsburgh gang. The white boys he's teaching to fight have never actually been in a rumble -- the closest the amateur actors have been to a real knock-down-drag-out is seats to "West Side Story."
The rumble class is an unusual collaboration of Prime Stage and the Allegheny County Juvenile Court system. Probation Department supervisor Tony McBride has brought two teen offenders to a rehearsal of the 1960s gangland drama, "The Outsiders," to help the cast understand their characters' motivations and actions.
It isn't some progressive, new form of punishment. McBride says the kids volunteered their street-fighting expertise as a way to give something back to society. He agreed to allow them to be interviewed on the condition that their faces, last names and gang affiliations not be revealed.
"The kids who are with me here today are kids who are listed as at-risk kids who might have had some involvement with the juvenile court," he says. "Basically they're technical advisers telling the cast members what it is to be involved in a gang. What's amazing is there are kids from different gangs -- a kid claiming Blood and a kid claiming DBGs [an independent North Side gang]. Independent gangs don't go around with no one, so it's amazing to see them come together and do something positive like this ... trying to change their lives and help them get out of a situation."
Director Wayne Brinda was in a bit of a situation himself. Although his Prime Stage has found a permanent home at the Hazlett Theater, he has yet to get a firm hold on his intended audience -- families and young people in their early teens. Prime Stage produces dramas in the no-man's land between fairy tales and adult theater -- powerful stories of personal revelation intended to provide character-building experiences for teens and young adults.
Brinda's current show, "The Outsiders," is Christopher Sergel's stage adaptation of S.E. Hinton's classic novel about violent Midwestern street gangs in the early 1960s. Fight choreographer Shaun Rolly has already counseled the cast on how make a staged fight look real, but Brinda still has a problem -- how to make middle-class, suburban, teen and young adult actors understand what it means to be in a gang.
McBride's lower-class, urban teen offenders explain:
"This guy here," says Gerald, as the rehearsed rumble freezes, "he would be watching the eyes of the [opposing gang member] he wants, the one he has a problem with. And these other guys, they're watching [the leader's] back. It's, like, unity. You're watching out for each other."
"Got that?" Brinda asks the cast. In the rehearsal, he's acting the part of the cross-town gang leader, squaring off with Elias Varoutsos as head of The Greasers.
"OK, let's do it one more time," he says, resuming the slow-motion street dance with his play-acting sparring partner. Around them, The Greasers and The Socs begin circling, facing the center.
"It's jockeying for position. Who's watching my back?" Brinda shouts. "What's happening? Where are your eyes? Remember who your character wants and watch his eyes. Watch them. Remember, there's a lot going on."
When Varoutsos' character breaks concentration, Brinda decks him with a fake sucker punch; the palm-slap sound effect cracks through the church activity room. Around them, the gang members begin to fight in three-quarter time.
Reese watches the fight unfold from his ringside seat with Gerald and McBride. His eyes widen as he points out an inconsistency.
"You wouldn't see so much punching," he says. "Once they hit each other, they're on the ground rolling around. And these other guys, when they're not fighting, they would be kicking him."
One of The Greasers kneels to ask Gerald a technical question as Brinda changes scenes.
Now, it's before the big fight and the gang is getting primed for battle. An aide spins a 45 of "La Bamba" on an ancient Decca record player, an anachronism that Reese has never seen.
"Before the fight, before the rumble, what happens?" asks Brinda. "Does the leader say something to get them psyched or something?"
"There's, yeah, a lot of yelling, pushing around," says Reese. "You talk about what they did, you know, and why they deserve [the beating that's coming] and what you want to do to one of them."
In the play, the well-to-do Socs and the poor Greasers agree to square off without weapons.
"When the leader goes up and presents the rules," asks Brinda, "how does that happen?"
"Well," says Reese, "in real life there ain't no rules. Everybody would be packin'."
During a break, Greasers and the Socs practice in small groups. Reese and Gerald retreat for a brief interview in the church hallway.
"I guess this is similar to a real fight, you know what I'm saying?" says Reese. "The music's different and the way they size each other up is different. But they're fighting like -- I understand where they're coming from -- but today it's, more or less, more guns."
"But they know how to celebrate afterwards," adds Gerald. "When we do it, we mostly drink."
"The only thing that's wrong," says Reese, "is they don't have any weapons. I mean, even if somebody would say, 'We ain't gonna use no weapons,' they still got heat. You don't just want to hit them. You want to do more."
The rumble choreography is important to Brinda's "The Outsiders," but most of the coaching has been in attitude. The actors, says Reese, had no idea why their characters would join a gang.
"It's simple," he says. "You wanna be in a gang because they're all the places you wanna be. You just want to be a part of something."
"They're my people, you know what I'm saying?" says Gerald. "In my case, I joined a gang 'cause, um, I didn't really have nobody in my life. No father or no mother. So I more or less decided, like, this would be my family."
"I was caught in somebody else's neighborhood and I got hit in the leg with a .22," says Reese. "And it's like, I'm always gonna be in somebody's neighborhood and I ain't gonna get caught again without no protection. I came here 'cause I just thought people should know what it's like. When I met [the actors] I said, you got some stuff right but y'all got to get real. It's serious out there. Gangs ain't nothin' to be funnin' with."
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