Vassarions put on Hip Hop Theater with high school students

Joseph Estenza is a 16-year-old high school junior with no apparent sign of back pain. But he has a different story today.

"I'm a 50-, 60-year-old homeless guy who apparently likes to get—how can we say—drunk," he says, struggling to repress a smile. He's clutching a tall wooden walking stick, bent over it as if his spinal column has withered with his years.

"We drink a combination of Robitussin and some other cough syrups," interjects Jake Berzoff-Cohen, a Vassar sophomore who is similarly contorted this afternoon. "It's purple drank."

"But we're philosophers, really," says Estenza, as he swings his imaginary paper bag up to his lips and takes a swig. "It's all part of the character."

Both Estenza and Berzoff-Cohen are standing at the entrance doors of the Lateef Islam Auditorium in Poughkeepsie's Family Partnership Center (FPC). It's rehearsal day for Hip Hop Theater, a youth acting program in its initial year of operation that brings Vassar students and Poughkeepsie middle and high school students together to put on a show for social change.

The program was first conceptualized by Theo "Tree" Arington, a Poughkeepsie transplant who grew up in the Bronx and spent a number of years in jail before coming upstate at the urging of his mentor, Lateef Islam, for whom the theater is named. Arington has since devoted his time toward working with the youth of Poughkeepsie.

Last spring, Jackson Kroopf '10 met Arington when he found him a seat at a lecture on Vassar's campus. Kroopf, a Community Action coordinator, has been involved in the Poughkeepsie community since he arrived from Los Angeles his freshman year.

"I drove with [Arington] to the dinner after the lecture that night," explains Kroopf. "I told him how I wanted to work with youth in Poughkeepsie, using their own stories, and he explained that he was trying to arrange this social change theater program with Lawrence Sealy. We agreed we would just do it together."

Kroopf drafted a philosophy statement describing the intentions and missions of the program, and recruited about 15 Vassar students to join him at the FPC on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons. Arington and Sealy, a local film producer, worked to enroll 14 Poughkeepsie students, from seventh to 12th grade. And last September, Hip Hop Theater was born.

The 20 or so Vassar and Poughkeepsie students in attendance on this day are scattered in small groups throughout the Auditorium, rehearsing specific scenes. A constant buzz of conversation, occasionally punctuated by a shout, a bang or a singing note, creates a tangible energy in the room.

Estenza and Berzoff-Cohen are going over their lines with Nate Silver '10, a drama major and the only participating Vassar student with extensive directing experience.

"You need to focus your bodies," says Silver after watching the cough-syrup philosophers go through a few lines. "There's a lot of moving around, back and forth. Part of it's your character, and part of it's what you're doing."

Estenza practices his line again, this time taking a slight step toward his imagined audience and poking his chest as he exclaims, "I gotta get myself a degree!"
"Yeah, exactly," says Silver. "Tell the audience."   

Seated nearby is Mike Godbe '09, who is strumming a guitar alongside seventh grader Rayhonna Mitchell—also known as "Ray Ray." She's singing Sam Cooke, softly: "It's been a long time coming, but I know a change gonna come, oh yes it will." They stop, suddenly, and discuss her breath control.

"I be tryin' to hold it longer," Mitchell says, and then claps once. "Let's try again."

At the right front of the auditorium, Rory Katz '09 discusses a scene with three younger students seated around a card table.

"It's about stage presence," says Katz, kneeling with them at the table. "It's having way more energy than you would in real life."

The students nod and consult their scripts. Meanwhile, onstage, Yasmin Roberti '11 is going though some dance steps with Poughkeepsie High School junior Kadeem Davis, and Zara Cadoux '09 is rehearsing lines with 11th grader Reanna Davis.

Sealy watches from the center aisle. "Reanna, speak louder, please!" he calls over the multitude of voices in the room. "Okay, nice and clear!"

The stage they stand on is backed by an extended stretch of mirror that runs the length of the platform. Sitting at the center of the Auditorium, one can see nearly every student in the room. All of that dialogue, all of those stories, are reflected there.

Davis gathers herself and tries again: "You're sayin' that at Vassar, you talk about Beyoncé in class?"

Throughout much of the fall semester, the weekly Hip Hop Theater sessions were centered on an ongoing discussion about the societal issues that permeate both the Vassar and Poughkeepsie communities. That discourse became the framework for the script, which was written by Kroopf, Sealy and a few other Vassar students. The play consciously comments on the relationship between Vassar and the city it resides in, something that the students discussed at length. The results were transformative.

"I think the biggest thing about Poughkeepsie is that it's not just this place, it's people as well," explained Berzoff-Cohen. "Vassar students just don't appreciate it, or understand it, or seek to understand it, as much as they could. They just accept it as an ‘other' that they don't need to explore."

Vassar and Poughkeepsie students alike echoed the sense that a certain "barrier" exists between the two communities.

"You can't just sit there and make an opinion about Poughkeepsie if you haven't really been there, or haven't sit and tried to talk to anyone in the community," said Poughkeepsie High School senior Vaughn Hardge. "You have to first ask yourself, what does Poughkeepsie have in store for me?"

"Poughkeepsie is only four square miles," said Kroopf, "but there's a lot that takes place in those four square miles. Getting to know students, you realize how polarized Vassar is from Poughkeepsie—there's this conception of Vassar that has no correlation to knowing anyone there. On both sides, we just create an imagined person."

"After actually meeting some Vassar students and getting to know them on a personal level, you get to see that within the differences, you find commonalities," said Kadeem Davis. "And even though they haven't lived our lives and we haven't lived their lives, in some way, shape or form, a lot of the things that we've individually gone through, they're kind of the same—just in different situations."

The play is scheduled to premier in a shortened version at Vassar on April 18, and there will be three showings at the FPC on May 1 and May 3. All of the performances are free and open to the public.

All of the students involved are anticipating the premiere with nerves and excitement, but in this case the process may prove more significant than the end product.

"I honestly think that if the night before the production everybody gets the flu and the show gets cancelled, it won't make it any less valuable," said Silver. "Yes, it's theater, but it's not about a finished play. It's about using theater as an entrance point from which to connect with each other."

As 6 p.m. approaches, Sealy and Kroopf call an end to the scene rehearsals, which have since moved onstage. The group gathers in a circle and drapes their arms around one another. They talk briefly about the day's progress and about next week's schedule, and everyone gives props to Mitchell—today was her first time singing onstage.

The crew debates what they'll yell for their departing cheer; laughing, chiming in ("Oh my God, we could be done by now!" Reanna Davis exlaims) until they finally agree. They start out in a whisper, and gradually build: "We're Hip Hop Theater and we're here to represent, the city of Poughkeepsie and all its residents! Keep it real!"

Then the circle breaks apart, and everyone spills off the stage. The mirror sees them off.