Playwright: Megan Carney, Sharon Greene, Paula Gilovich & the About
Face Youth Theatre Ensemble
At: About Face Theatre at Victory Gardens, 2257 N. Lincoln Ave.
Phone: 773-871-3000; $25-$40
Runs through: July 30
BY MARY SHEN BARNIDGE
'There are no textbooks on how to be a gay teenager,' one of our guides confides to us, 'If there was, I'd be better at it.' Even after the demise of the legendary Medusa club, the intersection of Clark Street and Belmont Avenue continues to draw itinerant waifs too young to find refuge in the bars and baths. Many of them have been abandoned by parents confused at, frightened of or hostile toward the prospect of a 'deviant' in the house. Even in the sanctuary of the Broadway Youth Center ( whose address and phone number are listed in the playbill ) , a cursory poll will bring forth tales of children shunned, not only by their peers, but the very institutions whose responsibility is to protect them.
These are the stories comprising The Home Project, a program of oral histories collected and presented by About Face Theatre's youth branch. From the testimonies of those who lived them, authors Megan Carney, Sharon Greene and Paula Gilovich have woven a literary tapestry illuminating a social problem too often overlooked by a populace that ignores the reality of citizens marginalized by age as well as economics, even as it glorifies idealized images of adolescence ( Britney Spears, et al. ) .
The Home Project deftly evades doing the same by announcing at the outset that the various players will not be telling their own stories. Thus, the saga of a fugitive from a parochial boys' academy might be narrated and acted by young women—a Brechtian device promoting intellectual distance. Oh, we get some relief from the relentless lehrstücke—moments of music, dance and poetry—but this is not poor-is-pretty spectacle like Rent. We are never allowed to forget that, for every orphan who escapes the street, hundreds more—literally, hundreds—are still left derelict, vulnerable to exploitation by feral predators.
'Break the silence!' we are exhorted, a call to activism aimed at both the victims and those with the power to deliver them. The buzz in the ladies' room afterward might have centered on the fashions worn by the sleekly-groomed trannie character, but Home Project's message is as unmistakable as it is unavoidable.