Reflections on the Morris Youth Detention Center - Part II

by Jack McKeon

My first solo venture at the Youth Detention Center never really left me. It demonstrated the need for good planning, but also for being able to go where the boys were going and being willing to abandon the plan to work with what they were hearing. It showed that I couldn’t count on my expectations. Flexibility was essential.  It also indicated that I never knew what to expect.  As a result, there was always a level of anxiety before I got there.

These boys carry a lot of baggage and from day to day we never knew what kind of mood or level of energy we might find. Being there demanded an empathy I didn’t always feel. We needed to understand that much of their negative reaction had little to do with us. I had to learn to keep my self out of it. Though there was sometimes open hostility to storytelling on the part of a few (very few) boys, discipline was rarely a problem because a guard was present at all times.  Sometimes the guard would land on the boys with some vehemence and we would have to find our way back to the telling. There could be other interruptions. Boys called out of the room. Walkie-talkies crackling and vocalizing. Other guards coming in to confer.  We found out later that the boys received ”points” if they refused to attend and more points if they didn’t participate. Keep your head up. Pay attention. Sit up. Sometimes they were woken from naps to attend. When the boys left, they had to remove their jumpers and be searched lest they take some kind of contraband from the classroom. The atmosphere obviously was not ideal.  Compounding this was the fluid nature of the population. We never knew who would be there the next session. If a Tuesday plan was to carry over to Wednesday, we couldn’t be sure that the same people would be there. This also, most of the time, kept us from forming any kind of sustained relationship with them. We wouldn’t see them over a period of time long enough to develop familiarity and trust. We were always starting over again. We met in the muster room.  It was always cold.

At first we had large groups for 1 and 1/2 hours, a long time for storytelling to any group.  It’s not clear why, since it had been past policy (under Ellen Musikant) to split large groups in half for 45 minutes each, much easier to handle and a relief for all concerned.  Maybe the guards didn’t remember or were just waiting for instructions. The guards themselves were always cooperative and often contributed or actually participated in the sessions.  More often they sat and did other work, their presence meant to keep the peace. Eventually Paula requested the old practice of splitting the groups and life became easier.

In spite of all of these issues, really bad times were infrequent. Never, ever, did any of us feel threatened, however unhappy the boys might be on occasion. But things could get unpleasant. T was a boy who had been transferred from another facility for breaking a boy’s jaw.  Gerry and I first met T in September of 2016. On our way to the session we both received a message from the education supervisor warning us that this was a particularly bad group. We should be prepared. Still, the session went well enough. Gerry had brought along his dousing rod, always a good ice breaker. Sometime later, I was there with Julie P. There was what seemed to me a calculated rudeness as Julie got started but she faced it down.  When I started my story, I was interrupted repeatedly and aggressively by T. I promised to deal with his questions after my story but I couldn’t get into it.  When another boy insulted yet a third boy, I called it a day.  We were ten minutes into the session, but it was clear to me, at the time anyway, that it wasn’t going to work. Whether it was a good or bad decision, nothing like it had happened before. 

           

Often, there were issues going on with guards and boys that we did not know about but which had an obvious effect. One day soon after my calling the session, I was there with Julie Della Torre.  For one of the sessions we had only T. I have no idea what had happened, but someone or something had pulled the boy’s plug. He was empty of affect and response. There was no energy left in him.  We told him stories he sort of heard, showed him pictures he didn’t look at, asked him questions he could barely respond to with a shake of the head. I asked him if he wanted to talk about the questions I hadn’t answered before.  A very slight shake of the head.  He could hardly muster the energy to move his body. It was the saddest experience of my time at the DC. JDT and I were  glad to have each other to share it with.

These were the difficulties. There was much else that made it all worth it. I’ll write about that next week.

Girl Power: Notes from the field

By Luray Gross and Maria LoBiondo - Storytellers for Girl Power! held during the KidsBridge to the Arts Camp 2013



One of the Girl's collage's exploring themes in “Tipingee”

The girls slouched on couches in a half-circle near the end of a very busy day packed with theater, dance, choir, songwriting, and visual art. It was day two of Kids Bridge to the Arts Summer Camp, and energy was low. 

            Then one of our nine middle schoolers asked, “Why is this called ‘Girl Power’?”

            “Where is your power?” we countered.

The girls perked up.  Once the conversation on respect and self-empowerment started, their ideas flowed. Physical power was mentioned first, but then came the power of our words, the ability to take control of a situation, being thoughtful. This was the perfect lead in to writing personal poems that reflected what each girl thought about themselves.

 
            Describing herself as the element of water, one girl wrote: “I would be snow so that I can cover bad things. Then I melt and they are carried away.” Another wrote, “My body is a temple…. Even when it is insulted, it stands strong always.”

The discussion about power also related to the story we would work on for the rest of the week: the folktale “Tipingee.” This story, published by Diane Wolkstein in her classic collection of Haitian folktales, The Magic Orange Tree, revolves around how spunky, savvy Tipingee, along the help of her friends, saves herself from being taken away by a stranger to be his servant. 

            It had quickly come to mind when we were choosing a story for a group of middle-school girls to hear, explore, play around with, internalize, and – ultimately – present for an audience of fellow campers (ages 6 – 13), teen counselors, and an assorted crowd of parents, grandparents, and other supportive adults.

             We wanted a story in which a girl, facing difficulty, takes charge of her fate, and a story that emphasized the role of young people helping each other. Our time would be quite limited, so we needed a story with mnemonic devices and a plot that would not be difficult to learn. Like many Haitian tales, “Tipingee” includes three nearly identical mini-episodes and a chant which listeners are encouraged to repeat. Overall, we wanted a story the girls could have fun with. We were, after all, planning for summer camp, not the heart of an academic program.

             We explored “Tipingee” through collage and journal writing as well as discussion. The girls keyed in to the emotions and examples of power in the story through both art forms.

            On Thursday, we decided how to divide the story for telling, and one of the girls suggested that her role would be to come up with an introduction. There was just time to try it out and be sure everyone knew where to begin and end. 

             As the hall filled on Friday afternoon, one of our very capable, but also self-conscious girls, came up and announced, “I’m not telling my part.  I can’t, I’m too nervous.”

    “But, Kyara,” we said. “We need you. We need all the parts of the story.”

     “Is everyone else going to do it?”

     “Yes,” we said, counting on no more attempted defections.

     “Okay.”

            Of course, Kyara did not leave her friends in the lurch.

 
        “I’m Tipingee, she’s Tipingee, we’re Tipingee too,” the girls chanted together from their places on the stage at the afternoon showcase, the culmination of the Trenton, NJ, Kids’ Bridge to the Arts Camp 2013. In a week, “our” girls had become a cohesive and powerful group of storytellers. Proud as any parent might be, we watched and listened from the back of the crowded hall.

Not just looking, but SEEING

          There is a story that I have long loved to tell.  It concerns a man, in one version he is a prophet, in another he is a magician, who wanders upon a wedding feast. "All are welcome!" cries the father of the bride from the steps of his home.  "Come one, come all!!"  After seeing this, the man goes to his home, and puts on the clothes of a beggar, rubbing dirt and mud on his skin and hair.  Hobbling back to the wedding, he still finds the father of the bride proclaiming that "All are welcome!"  But, when the man in his disguise approaches the wedding hall, he is turned away. 

          The man changes his clothes yet again, but this time he dons the robes of royalty, and this time the father of the bride not only welcomes him in, but bows to him, and allows him to sit at the family table.  During the meal, the man, instead of enjoying the food, puts the food on his clothing - even pouring the wedding wine down the front of his shirt.  All the guests are puzzled by the man's actions, and finally, besides himself with curiosity, the father of the bride asks what the man is doing.  The man looks at the father of the bride and says, "Earlier today, I came dressed as a beggar, and though you said all are welcome, you did not let me in.  Yet, when I came in these rich robes, you treated me as an honored guest.  And so, since I am the same person, and it is only my clothing that has changed, I assumed that what you welcomed in here today was not me, but my garments, and I was simply feeding what you invited into your feast!"

          This notion of being judged by one's appearance is something I think that every human being can relate to, and when I began, through Storytelling Arts, to tell stories in Youth Detention Centers, I found that this story hit home even more deeply.  While I have not yet read the book "Blink", I know it's premise - that we all have "hard wiring" that leads us to make instant decisions about who we think someone is, or is not.  Our past experiences can deeply color what it is we see before us.  And, I have found, while some of that is a good thing, that first glance is not always the whole story, any more than the first line of a folktale is the entire plot.

         In the Detention Centers, it is so easy to be swayed by the physical environment - metal detectors, guards, doors that lock, buzzers, cameras - things that we see in movies and television that project "Danger!!!"  Then there are the young people we are going to see - dressed in identical jumpsuits, walking with their hands behind their backs in a straight line - their faces sometimes stone-like, and hard to read.  If one were to stop at that first assessment, one would RUN - no way storytelling would work here - that's crazy!  But it is then that a teller - that I have learned to take a breath, and really SEE, not just look, but SEE, with more than my eyes, with my guts, with my, for lack of a better word, and not to sound too ooey and gooey, with my soul.  And when I do that, I see people. Children really, who, like children do, like we all do, have made a mistake.  People who deserve to be seen for all of what they are, not just their external circumstances or appearances, just as the man in that ancient folktale.

          While I am grateful when people express an admiration for the work  in the Detention Centers that I (along with three other amazing storytellers) am HUMBLED AND HONORED to do for Storytelling Arts, I can truly say that the person receiving more out of these sessions is ME.  Each and every time I go, my perceptions are challenged, and I am forced to look deeply within myself, and exam the lens I am seeing the world through, and that is a very, very, VERY good thing.

Julie is a self proclaimed “creativity junky” whose first art form was dance. After graduating from New York City’s High School of Performing Arts, she danced and sang in numerous musicals across the country and Off Broadway. She has acted in everything from Shakespeare to the work of young playwrights in NYC high schools. Along the way she learned stilt walking, clowning, American Sign Language, and how to tell stories.

Her storytelling work encompasses all her skills as a performing artist, as she brings every aspect of a story to life. Her stories have been heard in such venues as the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the New Jersey Storytelling Festival, and in schools, libraries, bookstores, hospitals, radio and private events across the tri-state area. As an artist for Hospital Audiences Incorporated, Julie performs in halfway houses, drug rehabilitation centers and senior citizen homes.

She is also the voice for several children's and young adult audio books for the Andrew Heiskill Library for the Blind and Handicapped in NYC. When not telling tales she can be found performing as a dancer in shows across the country and as a clown doctor for the Big Apple Circus Clown Care Unit, entertaining children in NYC hospitals.

I Saw a Young Man Fall in Love With Language

JULIE PASQUAL is a self proclaimed “creativity junky” whose first art form was dance. After graduating from New York City’s High School of Performing Arts, she danced and sang in numerous musicals across the country and Off Broadway. She has acted in everything from Shakespeare to the work of young playwrights in NYC high schools. Along the way she learned stilt walking, clowning, American Sign Language, and how to tell stories. Her storytelling work encompasses all her skills as a performing artist, as she brings every aspect of a story to life. Her stories have been heard in such venues as the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the New Jersey Storytelling Festival, and in schools, libraries, bookstores, hospitals, radio and private events across the tri-state area. As an artist for Hospital Audiences Incorporated, Julie performs in halfway houses, drug rehabilitation centers and senior citizen homes. She is also the voice for several children’s and young adult audio books for the Andrew Heiskill Library for the Blind and Handicapped in NYC. When not telling tales she can be found performing as a dancer in shows across the country and as a clown doctor for the Big Apple Circus Clown Care Unit, entertaining children in NYC hospitals.

I saw a young man fall in love with language this month. While that sight would always be a

gratifying thing, always make me do my happy dance just a little

bit, this was even more remarkable, because this event took place in a small

classroom, not in a school, but in a prison.

Over the last year and a half, my work with Storytelling Arts has led me into three Youth Detention Centers. And, each time I speak to people about this work, they are dumbfounded. “Are you nuts??? Aren’t you scared?? Do they listen??” – are some of the questions I hear from concerned and confused friends and family. I smile, because, frankly, I have asked myself the exact same things. So, as much for myself, as for anyone who might be reading this, I’ll answer those very sensible queries.

1) Are you nuts?? Of course, I am, but that doesn’t have anything to do with this!

2) Aren’t you scared?? Yes, but not in the way you might think. I’m not scared because I think I will be in any danger. I don’t envision burly men charging across the table trying to “shiv” me. No, I’m scared – well, nervous, actually, that I will not have the goods to reach through to these

young people – these kids. Because that is what they are – kids. They are children – even if they would never call themselves that – children who have made a bad choice. And who amongst us, has not? They are human, and the one thing I know “for sure” – as Oprah likes to say - is that humans are more alike than different. We all feel emotions, we all, in one way or another seek connection. The art of storytelling is all about connecting with the audience. A tale simply isn’t a tale until it has been told, shared with other human beings.

That is my worry -- that I will not be committed enough, articulate enough, interesting enough to touch these youths. Because folktales have the goods to inspire, teach, and move EVERYONE. With their archetypical characters, intriguing plots, they leave behind them a wake of interesting points to mull over, and to learn from. And, when I see audiences – be they five year olds, or the inmates in the Detention Centers, respond to storytelling, I know it’s not me, It’s the story. All I did was put it out there in a way they could hear. So, that’s my fear, that I won’t find the “way in” with my telling. Because if I can…well, let’s move onto the next question, shall we?

3) Do they listen?? YES, THEY DO!! I have seen a young man, who I was told was a double murderer, follow my every word like his life depended on it. I have seen another young man, whom I thought was asleep; lift his head, and his voice, to defend a character in a story. And, this past month, I saw that young man fall in love with language right before my eyes. He, and his “pod” had been told a wonderful story, by a wonderful storyteller – Paula Davidoff -- the day before, and he and two other fellows stood in front of their peers to retell it. LET’S JUST STOP AND ACKNOWLEDGE HOW AWESOME THAT WAS!

While the other two young men were more confident and outgoing, this fellow – I’ll call him J, was shy, stiff, and self conscious. With his hands tightly clasped behind his back, and his eyes lowered, he only spoke when his two companions “threw” him the story. But, then, half way through the story or so – he began to describe a horse as “strong and bold.” As he said those words, he too, became strong and bold. His body came alive, his eyes afire, and anyone could see his relish in saying that combination of words “strong and bold”. The little group then told another tale – this one they invented, and this time J was animated right from the start, interjecting wonderfully fluid language and body gestures throughout the piece. It was like seeing a flower blossom – the entire energy of the room had shifted and changed.

One could say this was a moment of victory, because that story, those words “strong and bold,” had reached into J, and touched on something that had lay dormant within him. He forged a true connection with that tale. And, connection is not only what storytelling is about, but what life is about as well. For to quote a book I just finished reading, “When you practice mindful connection, your life feels meaningful, and so it is.”

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Masks like those below were produced as part of a Storytelling Arts residency at the Mercer County Youth Detention Center in 2009. Students created these to depict character traits of people in stories as well as in real life -- including themselves.