PlayWrite Newsletter September 2024
There is no better exercise for your heart than reaching down and helping to lift someone up.—Bernard Meltzer
Welcome Fall!
We’re ushering in fall and the start of the school year with excitement as we welcome new PlayWrite, Inc. team members and continue to bring our transformative programs to “youth at the edge.”
Meet Our Newest Board Member
Patty Coble
Patty Coble’s 29-year career as a special and general ed teacher has taken her from Portland to Warrenton to Siletz and back. For the past ten years, she’s been with the Donald E. Long Juvenile Detention Center (DEL), where she discovered PlayWrite (and PlayWrite discovered her).
To understand how well-suited Patty and PlayWrite are to each other it helps to understand her working environment. Donald E. Long is a juvenile detention residential facility serving “pre-adjudicated youth.” These are kids who’ve been charged with a crime but not yet gone to court.
Detained youth are those charged with offenses so serious that release could endanger public safety — or the child’s welfare. Security measures at Donald E. Long include 24/7 monitoring of all areas of the building, high staff-to-youth ratios, escorts for youth en route to new locations, hourly inspections, and structured daily routines. The facility includes the Donald E. Long School, which provides educational services, including credit attainment, individualized education plan services, and English language learners services to detained students awaiting trials or hearings.
DEL is also home to Hassolo School, a voluntary accredited school program that serves youth receiving mental health assessment and evaluation. Formerly known as Assessment and Evaluation (A&E), the recently renamed Hassolo School programming includes academic credit leading to a diploma, special education services, English language learners services, and GED support.
Patty was recruited to Donald E. Long in 2014 as a long-term special education sub. Within three months she took the position of special education and general education teacher in A&E (now known as Hassolo). Soon after, PlayWrite entered the picture.
Interviewer: Tell us about the first workshop you did with PlayWrite.
Patty: Bruce [Livingston, PlayWrite founder] had met with our then-principal and they’d agreed to do a workshop, and it was essentially handed to me to execute. I was a little skeptical. I thought, “What’s going to come of this?” But I was impressed by the connections the mentors made with the kids. I had more trouble with the staff on the unit than I did with the kids and their mentors. This workshop model was new to staff, and some of the rules and regulations were getting pushed. I told staff to back off, because I wanted the kids to be free to create, and I wanted to see where this would go.
Some of the kids thought it was too hard, wanted to drop out, but we — Bruce, the mentors and I — kept saying “You can do this,” and they all wound up finishing.
I think the thing that surprised me most was when they gave the performances. I’d heard bits and pieces of their plays as we went along, but I stayed on the outside so I didn’t influence anyone. Then I’d watch a performance and go “OH, so that’s where that kid is coming from. I’m going to change the way I deal with that child because now I know they need this, or this, or that.” And afterwards I saw them take a more active role in their education, because they’d dealt with some of those deep-seated issues that nobody talks about, nobody wants to talk about, nobody knows how to get to. I saw improvement in their attendance, improvement in their education, improvement in their demeanor; it was an all-around improvement. So, when I had an opportunity to do it a second time, I said “Yes! Let’s go for it!”
The second time, the staff was familiar with the program, so they didn’t get into the kids’ faces saying things like “You can’t say that.” The kids still went through the stage of “I can’t do this, you can’t make me do this” but they all got through that, and they all finished it. Again, I saw that change in the kids, that realization that education’s important, and changes in how they dealt with each other and staff.
On the surface, it may not look like a huge immediate impact. But it allows a kid to deal with an issue in a way they’ve never been able to deal with it, to get it out without it being a hurt. I hadn’t known that they’d lost a parent or sibling. I hadn’t known that they felt abandoned by family or friends… until I started seeing these plays. And then it all made sense. They open up because it’s a safe environment, and nothing they say or do will be put down.
One of the ramifications of PlayWrite, for my students anyway, is to help these youth understand how to be accountable to themselves, inside a new context where they feel their own worth.
I would do it again and again and again.
Interviewer: How do the kids feel about the performances?
Patty: The kids work really hard on these plays. And to have actual, professional actors come in and perform their work is mind-blowing to them. These are working actors and actresses who come in, use their time to work with these kids, teach them about staging, directing, editing, and all the things that go along with writing. Being able to make decisions, change things, revise… these help the kids feel like they have control over their lives. Most of these mentors have been working with kids long enough that they get it, and that shows in the way they work with the kids.
Interviewer: How did you come to join the PlayWrite board?
Patty: Oh, I don’t know… was it the twisting of my arm? (Laughter) Bruce emailed me and said, “I think you’d be really good on the board, and you should meet with Jane [Unger, board president and founding Artistic Director Emerita of Profile Theatre Project]. We all met for coffee, and talked. Bruce left and Jane and I kept talking about PlayWrite and many other things, and eventually I said, “Okay. You got me.”
Interviewer: How do you see PlayWrite’s future?
Patty: I’m still getting to know the how/when/where/why of PlayWrite, but I think, based on my personal experience with PlayWrite, we need to do a lot more outreach. We need more ways to fund workshops and performances, so more kids get the experience of being proud of how they’re doing. I’ll do whatever I can to help do that.
We want to support kids on the edge — and how much more on the edge can you be than when you’re incarcerated? — or you’re going through drug and alcohol treatment, because something in your life has led you to that. For these kids, there haven’t been lot of positive role models or positive experiences in their lives — in their short lives — to make them feel worth anything, to feel proud of themselves.
Thinking now about the first group of kids I worked through PlayWrite with; I honestly don’t remember seeing any of them come back. I don’t know the average rate of return, but often a kid sent to DEL will return, multiple times. We call them the “revolving door” kids. Again, in my experience, the kids who complete the PlayWrite program don’t return.
Interviewer: Any last words?
Patty: Give! It’s a worthy cause!
Interviewer: Yes! What was it you said, Patty? You can empower a kid to become accountable to themselves… and that in turn, turns them into a citizen.
Patty: Yes!
Coming Events
Join PlayWrite, Inc. and other neighborhood services and businesses at the final Hollywood Fun Fest, October 26, 10am-1pm. Find the festivities next to the Hollywood Farmers Market (44th Ave between Sandy & Hancock)!
This fun-filled event offers games (cornhole, giant Jenga), casual PlayWrite performances and activities, free ice cream courtesy of Rose City Park Presbyterian Church, and (we’re guessin’) a bunch of Halloween candy. Sponsored by PBOT Play Streets.
News About PlayWrite people
2018 PlayWrite actor/coach Paul Susi, Lyndsay Hogland (former PlayWrite workshop director), and Anna Fritz have toured an adaptation of Homer's Iliad to prisons, schools, places of worship, community centers, and theaters in Oregon. This year, they’ll take the show to Wisconsin, Vermont, and Maine.
In keeping with the project’s Oregon origins, they’re kicking off with a public performance in Portland at the Risk / Reward Festival's Election Anti-Party, a mini performance festival at the Ellyn Bye Studio, Portland Center Stage, on Thursday, September 26, 7:30 pm. Tickets are pay-what-you-will starting at $5.
Paul says, “I do this show not because I want to glorify the Greeks or war or Homer or dead white guy culture. I do this because this play (written by Dennis O'Hare and Lisa Peterson) is a key that can unlock one of our oldest and most confounding puzzles, one that all of us, no matter our identities and cultures and stories and faiths, all of us wrestle with every day of our miserable and glorious lives: how do I let go of my rage? And yet! I promise you that the Iliad is a work of hope and healing, precisely because it's unflinchingly truthful, with that incisive, illuminating clarity that the Greeks were so good at. There is so much tenderness, so much unexpected grace in this play.”
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