Reflections on the Morris Youth Detention Center - Part III

by Jack McKeon

Many, many good things happened in our workshops at the Youth Detention Center. Often these would occur fleetingly, a quick laugh, a searching question, an eager listening pose, an insightful comment. It would be impossible to list all of these, but they happened frequently. Here are some that were important to me.

The boys, and finally, girls really liked the stories. They would come into the workshop sullen and resentful with their heads down. As we told, the heads would rise, eye contact would be made and, eventually, faces and body language showed total involvement. New residents, who didn’t know what to expect and who started out with embarrassed giggles, very quickly saw that the residents who had previously participated in Storytelling were listening and listened themselves. Students remembered the stories from day to day. Even after my first solo venture, when Julie P came in the next day they could repeat what I’d told them. 

There could be genuine enthusiasm. There would be amen corner responses, often obscene and incredulous that the characters could behave this way or angry at the frequent injustice. There could be energetic discussions afterwards. If time was up and a story wasn’t finished, they would insist on knowing how it ended. They could retell the stories. Occasionally they would tell their own. Boys who had been released and found their way back would greet us and tell us which stories they remembered we had told them. Once, a boy who expressed his disgust at the silliness of the stories provoked this response (more or less). “Just listen. These stories have a lot to do with us.”

The workshop aspect of each session usually involved some sort of creative response to the story. Most of these were very successful. They painted masks, made dream catchers, constructed collages of magic trees and monsters, painted and drew and used markers. They often worked with an intensity and focus that surprised me. If one session wasn’t enough to finish the work, they wanted to continue the next day. Often they wanted to take the results back with them to the residence area. They wrote vivid poetry drawn from their own experiences and were pleased to have it read aloud. It’s hard to imagine where else in their lives the opportunity for this kind of expression would arise

With those boys who were there for an extended period we did develop a trust and familiarity. W was a prime example. He was there for a year, waiting to reach his majority so he could be sent to real jail. When he first arrived, Julie DT and I were using the tarot cards again. He was clearly miserable. I gave him The Tower and told him just to look at it. He did. He cheered up as time went on, listened closely, had much to say and became a favorite of ours. We have kept a running commentary on our sessions on a wiki site and during that year, the comments increasingly mentioned W, his responses and general participation, even whether or not he was there, as if that in itself were an important point. I wished him well the last time I saw him before he left. I couldn’t shake his hand because at that time were were not supposed to touch the boys, but I would have. On his way out he said that he would see me again. He didn’t know how but he would. I think we still miss him.

There’s the story of A. When I first met him, I referred him in my wiki post, to my lasting shame, as a dope. He giggled constantly and blurted out inappropriate comments, and did strange disruptive things with whatever was at hand. He was, of course, a damaged person with something like Tourette’s, though I have no idea whether that was it. Julie DT and I went in one day to find, to our relief, that he was gone. As part of this work at the Morris County facilities, we would spend a third 45 minute session at the youth shelter down the hill (a story for another blog). When we arrived this time, there was A. He told us that his favorite story was “The Ugly Duckling”. Julie asked why. He said that he felt like the duckling, hated and avoided.

That day, we were telling stories about the goddess and A contributed excellent observations about the powers of women. Julie sort of told the “Duckling”. When I told my story, I think it was Baba Yaga, he focused, was quiet, and tried hard to articulate his response when I was through. It was a stunning example of the power a story can have. A was touched, focused, brought back for a time from his usual disruption. It was a session neither Julie nor I will forget.

Finally there was H who spent his classes, when T was present, with his head in his hands. He never looked up. At this point we were in a different room with no guard so we let him get away with it. When T left, H’s head would come up for a while. He began to comment on the stories from within his arms. “Just because my head’s in my arms that doesn’t mean I’m not listening.” Sometimes he came in and was totally there. His re-emergence was another example of the way trust would build with a resident who was in the Center for a long time. During our last few sessions last Spring, we had the boys writing dialogue and acting it out, often improvising. (Without a guard present, we were able to move around and interact.) The sessions were noisy and delightful. It was play. H wrote at length. During one of those sessions I told “The Golden Bird” again. He had a lot to say, and anticipated events in the story as it went along. He was impatient with the foolishness of the hero. At the very last session, Paula and I decided just to tell stories. Paula announced that it might be our very last time there. H looked up, mouth open in astonishment and, I think, dismay. After Paula explained why, he went back to his writing, one ear cocked to our stories. He was leaving the facility shortly thereafter.

We rarely knew what these residents had done to bring them to the Detention Center and we did not want to know. We were working with something else. Except for what we could see once in a while during the sessions, it is difficult to know if we made any impact. Did W take some part of us or our stories with him to help sustain him through his hard time? Did any of the residents, as they lay in bed at night, in lock-down, think about the story they had just heard? Did it make a connection? We can only hope so. Was it all worth it? Absolutely.

As a postscript, I need to say that one of the wonderful things for me about working at these facilities was the chance to interact so closely and cooperatively with four great storytellers who were full of ideas and offered wonderful support, all under Paula’s capable guidance.

  

Telling and Listening to Stories: Being Human Together

written by Julie Pasqual

     

  I hope I am not the only one who loves it when someone you admire, and think is talented, smart, deep, and inspiring says something that you yourself have thought?  Something that you have felt to be “deeply true”, but you were never quite sure if that idea, or concept, would make sense to anyone other than you?  That moment when your mouth drops open, and you bleat out, “That’s what I ALWAYS thought!!”

           If it hasn’t happened to you, let me be the first to tell you that it is an AWESOME feeling, it’s like having the kid that teased you in junior high march up to you and say, “Sorry, I stuffed you into that locker, you’re actually pretty cool.”  It has a sense of immense validation, a giant “I told you so” to the world, and it leaves me thinking that maybe, just maybe, I am not as crazy as I look!!

            And that is how I felt the other day, when I opened up my most favorite author – Anne LaMott’s, newest book “Small Victories” If you are unfamiliar with her books – READ THEM, if you know her work – READ THEM AGAIN.  Here is a woman who lives a REAL life – that is messy, joyful, funny, and tragic – and so when she speaks in her poetic yet earthy voice, she is more than worth listening to.  And, so I – a storyteller, who, through the marvelous opportunities that Storytelling Arts has allowed me, tells stories in prisons - was delighted to see that one of her essays was about her experience going to San Quentin with a storyteller friend of hers.

          She speaks of her fear that the prisoners will not respond to her friend’s stories, and stands ready to save the situation – but then, as I have seen it do over and over in the Morristown Youth Detention Center,  the magic of storytelling, to quote Ms. LaMott “steals the show right from under her”.  She writes of how this group of hardened career criminals listened to the stories, mesmerized, and when they did, she writes “they looked like family.”  And why?  Because, her friend, the storyteller, Neshama had shown them that “I’m human, you’re human, let me greet your humanness.  Let’s be people together for a while.”  And that “they had thought Neshama was going to teach them a lesson, and she instead sung them a song.”

          YES!!  BINGO!!!  THAT’S ABSOLUTELY RIGHT!!!!!  ENOUGH SAID!!!  NAILED IT!!!

               I have witnessed first hand, this “song” of storytelling, and I have experienced over and over, the power a story has to create not just a relationship and bond between teller and audience, but, also, between one listener and another – one human being to another.  Too often, these incarcerated young men and women have had their essences whittled down to the mistake they made that put them in that facility.  But they, like all of us, are complex, multi-faceted beings.  Their lives have, and will, twist, turn, then twist again – just like those of the characters in the folktales we bring to them.  And because to tell a story one must listen, REALLY listen to their audience by looking at their faces, feeling their energies, feeling out the way to the tell the story at that moment, for just those people, we are given a chance to, as Ms. LaMott beautifully states – greet them at their humanness. 

          There is such a beauty in that – reminding someone that their transgressions do not define them, and that life is not simple, streamlined, or linear. It is big, messy, individual, and to a great extent a mystery.  Stories remind of us that – with their sometimes incredible series of events, larger than not just life, but the universe’s characters, and their truths – things that resound in all of us, that sound off an alarm of AHA!! somewhere inside those that hear them, and that make us turn to the person next to us and, even if just for a second connect!

    

         

       

                   

Teaching Aeschylus in 8th Grade

One my projects this fall has been a collaboration with 8^th grade social studies teacher, Darcel Deodato. Darcel is one of the teachers who participated in the long-term teacher education program that Julie Della Torre and I wrote about last spring. We are both back at the school, but this year we are each working intensively with only two teachers.

Eighth grade students in New Jersey study Civics. They learn about forms of government and, specifically, the organization of the United States government. When Darcel and I discussed how to embed storytelling into this curriculum, we decided to focus on stories that would help students think about why people need laws and how government serves society. Over the summer, I thought about a lot of stories: stories about justice being served, stories about the miscarriage of justice, and stories about people taking justice into their own hands. In the end, I decided to begin the year by telling the students the ancient Greek story of the trial of Orestes in Athens.

As I was preparing my lessons, I spent quite a bit of time trying to craft the myth into a tellable tale. This is always an issue when you’re working with a long and complex story, but with this particular story, I began my work with the goal of making it less graphically disturbing. The story of Orestes comes near the end of the Legend of the House of Atreus, a cursed family whose generations were blighted by murder, cannibalism, and incest. The horror begins when a first ancestor, Tantalus, cooks his son and serves him to the gods. It ends, five generations later, with Orestes in the court of Athens, on trial for matricide.

Orestes was the son of Agamemnon, the king who led the armies of Greece against Troy. The story of Agamemnon and his immediate family is beyond tragic. Not only was his sister-in-law, Helen, the cause of that bloody, drawn-out war, but he, himself, felt obligated to kill his oldest daughter, as a sacrifice to Artemis, before his armies even left Greece. While he was at war, his wife, Clytemnestra (Helen’s sister), took a lover (who was Agamemnon’s cousin) and plotted revenge for her daughter’s death. Upon his return from Troy, Clytemnestra murdered Agamemnon and, in turn, their son, Orestes, killed her to avenge his father. 

The murders of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra are the subject of a trilogy of plays by Aeschylus. In the last play, Orestes, haunted by his mother’s ghost and tormented by her Furies, the Erinyes, seeks the help of the goddess, Athena. When Orestes arrives in Athens, instead of passing judgment, herself, Athena asks the help of the citizens of Athens to end the cycle of blood-for-blood revenge. She creates a jury to decide the case of Erinyes vs. Orestes.

At first, I thought I would follow Aeschylus and cut the pre-Agamemnon generations out of my story, but as I worked, I realized how important the stories of the early ancestors are to one of the most significant results of Orestes’s trial: Athena’s persuasion of the Erinyes, chthonic goddess of retribution and guardians of family bonds, to remain in her city. I began to think that a listener needs to hear about the horrible crimes of Tantalus and his descendants to understand why society needs the presence of these goddesses and, while Aeschylus’s audiences would have known the family history, my audience would not. Ultimately, I decided to tell the story from the beginning. 

The unit took five class periods. The story worked in the social studies curriculum. Not only did it introduce the idea of a judicial system based on trial by a jury of peers, it was also relevant to the lives of the students who live in a city where neighborhoods are torn apart by retaliatory gang killings.  As the story unfolded, we stopped to allow time for students to discuss the moral issues involved. For example, students debated Agamemnon’s choices at Aulis. Should he kill his child so that the Greek Armada could sail to Troy? This discussion raised important questions: Is it ever justifiable to take a human life to further a cause or ideal? What about if taking one life might save others? We also talked about ‘laws’ that seem basic to our human instincts, like those against murder and incest. Students spoke passionately about these questions.

Near the end of the story, before I told the outcome of the trial,  Darcel divided the class into prosecution and defense teams who presented arguments for each side based on the story and our related discussions. During the debate, six students sat as jurors. The outcome of the 8^th grade trial differed from that of the original. The jury felt strongly that Orestes should be punished for his deed. The next day, students did a dramatic reading of the trial scene from Aeschylus’s play (We used Peter Meineck’s translation which is easy to read and lends itself to performance.) and discussed its outcome. Much of this discussion focused on Athena’s appeasement of the Erinyes and why it was important for her to persuade them to become guardians of the city.

Hidden

by Jack McKeon

 

Yesterday (8/16)  Julie DellaTorre and I attended a performance of a play written and acted by Girls Surviving, the program in Morristown that Paula Davidoff has been a guiding part of for years.  It was my second time to watch these girls perform  in the summer program and both times I have been impressed by the cohesion, cooperation and even acting abilities of the girls, who must, at first, show up with all the baggage of  “girls at risk”, and by the sophistication of the ideas explored in the play itself, written through a process of self-exploration and mutual discussion focused on issues of immediate consequence to the girls.

The play was titled “Hidden”.  The concept paired the girls, one as the socialized persona trying to keep to the right path and the other the hidden shadow urging them on to some sort of self-destructive, if immediately pleasurable, behavior.  A second theme was dreams, what they are like, what they can give us or unleash in us, and how we can try to make them real.  The lovely opening put the girls onstage, the hidden self behind the open one.  They began to speak of dreams while performing slow dance movements, hidden interweaving with open.  If these kids got that concept, as they must have, what a wonderful thing for them to experience.

As the play went on, I was struck by the fairy tale concept in it.  It was, in fact, a good representation of the princess/waiting maid conflict in “The Goose Girl”.   I spend much of my storytelling time with this kind of analysis so I was happy to see it open up on stage and, I would think, in the imaginations of the girls.  At one point, one of the girls becomes her Dad’s “princess” and her mother tells her that she will always be close to her daughter’s heart.  It was an impressive parallel to the Grimms’ tale, even after (Duh!) one of the girls during the post performance Q and A mentioned that Paula had told them a story which had influenced the shape of the play.  Of course this was “The Goose Girl”.  Paula, I now remembered, had introduced her wonderful analysis by saying she was going to use it in a situation involving “alter egos”.

What a vivid example of the power of story.  These girls were able to see the patterns of their own lives revealed in the pattern of the story.  They could take that notion, work with it to make it their own and see in it some hope, some indication of the power they have over their own lives.  At the end of the play, the two halves embraced or, hand in hand, opened the door to the future.  In ”The Goose Girl”, the maid and the princess don’t quite make that accommodation, though I believe that the maid’s self-imposed punishment is carried out, perhaps according to her desire, for the good of the whole.  In the Q and A, it became even more clear how these girls, strangers at the beginning, had been drawn together by the experience into a unified, supportive group, a “troupe” as the playbill has it. Even the youngest, an 8^th grader, felt accepted and protected by the older girls.  They were sharp, articulate and clearly pleased with what they had accomplished.  The success of the program in general was evident by the number of alumnae there were in the audience.

Having taught high school for many years and worked at the juvenile facilities in Morristown for the past year and a half. I am always curious about what effect we have on the kids we work with.  Sometimes we know, usually we don’t.  However, Julie Pasqual (who also worked this summer in the Girls Surviving program), at the Sussex County fair ran into a boy who was at the detention center when I started with the program.  He recognized her (big surprise there!), was delighted to see her, proud to be out, going for a GED and working.  Julie said he looked like just a kid.  It would be nice to think that his joy at seeing her reflects a little of what we all might be accomplishing, of what storytelling can do.  Maybe you all have many reports of a similar nature. 

Anyway, “Hidden” was a wonderful demonstration of how empowering it can be to tell your story – even if your audience is just a stove. 

Not to put you on the spot, JP, but it would be interesting to know about your experience with the girls.  The joy seems apparent.  What were the difficulties, if any?  And, Paula, if I have misrepresented anything, please comment.