Our Compton Teenagers from the tough part of town, who are challenged to change their ideas about the world by a new energetic and motivational teacher are almost a whole genre on to themselves. With so many of these Dangerous Minds type films "based on true stories", it was nice to see the real thing for once. In OT:
Our Town there are many of the same cliches and stereotypes that are found in scripted films, but with its low production values, you never forget that you're watching an average documentary about ghetto kids struggling to put on a play. It has been 21 years since Dominguez High in Compton, California has staged a play, English teacher Catherine Borek thought it was time to change that. In a school famous only for its race riots and basketball team, the quiet artsy kids that hang out in the corner of the lunchroom, that don't get themselves involved in either of the prior, needed their own moment to shine. It comes in the form of Thorton Wilder's famous play Our Town. Why was this play about small town life in New Hampshire, set during the early 1900's, chosen? Simple, because Our Town contains no scenery and little in the way of props. For a school with almost no budget for the arts, no auditorium and a basketball coach, who refuses to share his gymnasium, they needed to find something small in scale to produce. At first the kids complain about it. They simply can not relate to these characters, their setting or their language. "We do not want to do this fucking shit. This is fucking weak!" Being the exact sentiments they use. Catherine and fellow teacher Karen Greene are patient with them. They get to the kids to see the story in their own lives. The teachers show them how the plays' morals are relevant to them and their situation. They get the kids to bring their lives into it, their pictures and clothes, while also updating the time frame and location to their own. Besides sitting in class while rehearsals are held, we're taken into the lives of a few of the lead kids. We're shown that despite their Boyz in the Hood surroundings, that these are not gang-bangers. That they're kids with high ambitions, dreams of going on to college, hopes to break out of the vicious cycle of poverty and absentee parents. Ebony Brown who plays the main role of Stage Manager puts it best. "That we're not that different [from you], but we're way different than you think we are." The film gives just a taste of their lives outside of school, running only 77 minutes long, the film might have benefit from an extra ten minutes more about who these kids are and what their day to day lives are really like. I felt that they never scraped much deeper than the surface of these kids. That they could have brought much more emotional resonance to the film in spending a little more one-on-one time with them, away from the confines of school. [center][/center][center]Catherine Borek[/center][center] [/center]The reason for this may be that OT: Our Town came into being when Catherine was looking for some help to produce the play. In doing so she met director Scott Kennedy, they fell in love, and Scott fell in love with the behind-the-scenes story; he showed up with events already in motion, trying to catch-up. With a video camera in tow, he plays the part of another kid in class, we the audience, stand in the corner, along for the ride through rehearsals. We laugh with them at the corny dialogue, and at the awkwardness of when the kids playing George and Emily have to kiss for the first time. It works in its own way, but after a while, you feel like a bit of an outsider, not really connected with what is going on. While the kids are rehearsing their extremely amateur rendition of the play, Kennedy inter-splices a professional performance of Our Town, a TV version starring Hall Holbrook, for us neophytes that may have never seen it for ourselves. When it comes time for the kids to perform it for real, the cameras sit in the audience, like the POV of one of the actor's parents. Sure, the acting is terribly weak, but the kids have fun with it, and the sold-out audience eats it up. One of the most poignant moments comes at the end when we see the reactions of some of the kid's parents and the effect their words have on their children. Dominguez High's Our Town turned out to be a tremendous success, so much so, that they've been performing sold-out plays in the years since. Who knows, they may even get their own auditorium.
July 27, 2006
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