They admit feeling unable to please their parents, presuming that Dad stuck around to make his daughter feel so lousy she seeks comfort from drugs or a baby. Most choices are made consciously, they insist, but some life-altering or -ending decisions feel predestined by forces way beyond kids' control.
"If you could talk to love, what would you say?" one of the young women asks at a pivotal moment in the play. "I would tell love 'You are a horrible monster' because it manipulated me."
Of Mythic Proportions is a Barrymore Award-winning collaboration of B. Someday Productions and the Kensington charter school. Each semester, a new group of initially reluctant thespians decides how much dysfunction to divulge, what message to convey to adults who never seem to be listening.
One year, theater director Michelle Pauls tells me, the material was so dark an elementary school teacher who normally hosts a performance "asked us not to come because it would depress the fourth graders."
This year's cast includes four teen parents and one girl who wrote about regretting an abortion. Street violence has touched all the performers, but the group decided to act around that central plot point with sketches about the slippery slope of smoking dope and bullying, the healing power of friendships and forgiveness.
First-time actor Jennifer Melendez somehow keeps her cool as her proud mother videotapes the show from the front row. After the applause, the 10th grader tells me why they didn't confront the slayings that ended with a 30-year-old stepfather behind bars.
"This play," she says, "is about us wanting to change the world."
Managing expectations
