By Darlene Donloe
Contributing Writer
LOS ANGELES — The relationship between police and the community — any community — can be tenuous at times.
One of those relationships is the focus of a groundbreaking program that is taking place through the Fountain Theatre, which has joined forces with Design for Sharing, UCLA’s arts education program for students in kindergarten through the 12th grade, to showcase the culminating performance of “Walking the Beat,” the theater’s transformative community-building program that sees police officers and teens working together to create theater.
UCLA’s Center for the Art of Performance provides public school students from across Los Angeles access to the performing arts, both at UCLA and in their classrooms.
“Walking the Beat: Los Angeles 2024: In the Crossfire” takes place at 7 p.m., Sept. 22 at the UCLA Nimoy Theater. It is a new multimedia work created by 15 teens and eight police officers.
A free student matinee will follow Sept. 23, allowing 250 students from across Los Angeles County to experience the finished work and talk with the cast and creators.
Directed by Theo Perkins and written by Fountain Theatre Arts Education Manager Nathan James, “In the Crossfire” was devised by students and police officers based on their writing, conversations and improvisations about the effects of gun violence on them, personally and within their communities.
The show features excerpts by facilitator and director Angela Kariotis and the 2024 “Walking the Beat” NJ Ensemble.
“This was a collaborative process,” said James, who wrote the program by observing. “I sat in on workshops run by teaching artists. I watched them guide the students and cops through community-building exercises. I watched the process.
“I took a lot of the monologues and journal entries between students and officers and created a story out of them. I put some structure to the stories. I took what they devised and I learned the harsh effects of this new world on these students’ self-esteem.”
James said one of the issues he wrote about was the shooter drills that students experience in schools.
“At some of the schools, several drills are done to the point that students no longer take them seriously,” said James, who has held the position of arts education manager at the Fountain for a year. “Since gun violence is our theme this year, I wrote a piece about what would happen if the shooter drill was real.”
James said he was “surprised” by some of the things he learned from both students and cops.
“I was very much surprised,” he said. “I’m a Black man in America. I’ve been assaulted by cops on many occasions. We walk into this with our nerves already churning.
“But I learned that the cops experience nerve-wracking just like we do when they walk into certain situations. ‘Walking the Beat’ humanizes everyone. The purpose is to humanize each other.”
James knows and writes of what he speaks. He tells the story of the time he was driving in his hometown of Pittsburgh and was pulled over and surrounded by several squad cars.
“They dragged me out of the car,” James said. “They put me on the ground and put a gun to my head and told me if I moved, they would blow my head off.”
James, who was a spoken word poet and actor at the time, said he told the cops that if they wanted to know who he was, his face was on a billboard just around the corner.
“They sent someone to look,” he said. “When it was verified, they got me off the ground, brushed me off, and told me it was a mistaken identity. I said nothing. One officer then told me to stay out of trouble. Why would he say that to me? I came into ‘Walking the Beat’ with my trauma.”
James believes there is a “Big problem with policing.”
“We’re being policed by people who don’t know us,” he said. “Relationships need to be built between the cops and the communities they serve. They need to get to know the community they serve. If we have strangers coming into our community with a general mindset — that when the problems begin, everybody looks like the enemy — there will always be conflict.”
James, who received a degree in Africana Studies from the University of Pittsburgh, and has a master’s of fine arts from Penn State, said he would encourage everyone to see the show.
“People should come just to see the world these kids are being forced to grow up in,” James said. “They should come to see the possibility of what the community could be. We are creating a vision of what policing could look like in the future.”
Student participants this year represent five local high schools, including Hollywood High School, Valley Oaks Center for Enriched Studies, Orthopaedic Hospital Medical Magnet High School, Ramón C. Cortines School of Visual and Performing Arts and Hawthorne High School.
Now in its fifth year at the Fountain, “Walking the Beat” provides a life-changing experience for underserved youth.
Founded by the Elizabeth Youth Theater Ensemble and led by executive and artistic director Theo Perkins, participants in the hands-on program are guided by Kariotis and teaching artists ReSheda Terry and Alex Ubokedom.
“Walking the Beat” supporters include the Araxia and Vladimir Buckhantz Foundation, Mary Jo and David Volk, the Audrey and Sydney Irmas Charitable Foundation, Maggi Phillips, Jennifer Simchowitz, Anne-Marie Spataru, Jason Zelin and Allison Stein, and the Los Angeles County Department of Probation.
The UCLA Nimoy Theater, is located at 1262 Westwood Blvd., Los Angeles. Admission is free, but reservations are required (subject to availability).
Parking is $3 (flat rate) after 5 p.m. in the structure located at 10866 Wilshire Blvd. For information: 323-663-1525 or www.FountainTheatre.com.
Darlene Donloe is a freelance reporter for Wave Newspapers who covers South Los Angeles. She can be reached at ddonloe@gmail.com.
