Vibrant Nation

Our interview with Mel

1. When and how did you begin to devote yourself more to giving back?
   
   I can't remember a time when I didn't want to be an actor, dancer, or a writer - a teller of stories in some kind of limelight. I started acting at age 3 and had my Actors' Equity card by 18. I enjoyed an exciting acting career that spanned over 20 years on stage, on TV, and in film. In 1996, I finally left acting, but I continued in show business as a writer and acting coach.
   
   At the same time, I've always done volunteer work of some kind. Acting can be a very self-centered profession, so even as a teen actor, I tried to balance that by working at the women's shelter, feeding the homeless, volunteering at church, or teaching English to new language learners.
   
   The Shakespeare Club came to be when I found myself in a creatively fallow period at the same time that a local elementary school was reaching out to the community for help. I'd been reading about and was disturbed by the high percentage rates of young teens dropping out of school - especially minority children. By ninth grade many can't read well and they lag in math. They feel so incapable that they drop out. They become ripe for gang recruitment because they need to feel part of a family and feel cool.
   
   I volunteered at Walgrove Elementary here in Los Angeles as a reading mentor because I wouldn't have been any good as a math mentor! Later, because of my acting background, I came up with the idea of kids discovering empowerment through the plays of William Shakespeare. The kids I work with are in 3rd, 4th and 5th grade, and I thought if the right seeds could be planted early, maybe some of those dropout numbers could be turned around.
   
   The Shakespeare Club after-school program at Walgrove Elementary is now going into its fifth year. We have twenty actors, a stage manager, and two students who handle lights and sound, as well as fifteen students who work on props during their lunch break. We work very intensely for five months during the year, both in groups and in one-on-one coaching sessions. At the end of the year, the kids do four performances in front of the entire school. It's amazing to see the kids onstage and watch them instantly become stars. I remember, after a performance of Twelfth Night, how the awed younger students came up to touch the actors' hands. It was fantastic. Shakespeare Club is now the cool club in school.


2. What do you love most about the cause you support?
   
   I love seeing kids discover their capabilities as they stretch to the highest bars of language and bravely perform in front of audiences. Most of these children have never seen a play, let alone acted in one and certainly not Shakespeare. And yet Shakespeare's plays are a great fit for them. Look at Shakespeare's themes: power, revenge, love. On every playground in every elementary school, children are fighting for the same things.
   
   I remember one boy in the very first year of Shakespeare Club. He was struggling to learn English and feeling a lot of pressure from his parents, who not only forced him to join the club but also made him attend cultural dance classes. He was a nightmare. When he played Hamlet the following year, I told him, "You know, the cool thing about acting is, you get to do things on stage that you can't do in real life." Watching him as Hamlet talk back to his "mom" onstage was fantastic, a real breakthrough. This boy expressed all the rage and frustration he really felt - and instead of being punished, he was embraced and empowered and applauded. That's one of the most valuable things about the craft of acting. There's something rebellious about it but it also legitimizes your feelings. It's just what children need: to have their feelings taken seriously.
   
   We had another boy who joined the club as a third grader. He wrote in his club journal, "I want to learn to read." Well, this boy became a writer and showed himself to be a comic genius. On stage, he had the audience in the palm of his hand. He was coming up with his own bits. By the time he played Benvolio in Romeo and Juliet, he was saying, "Ms. Ryane, what play are we doing next year? Is it a comedy? Because I think I'm much better at comedies." A week after the play ended, he was still thinking of bits. "I should have done this at the curtain call - I don't know why I didn't think of it!" Just like a real actor.


3. What do you find most difficult about your work, and how do you overcome it?
   
   The most difficult aspect of my work is always managing classroom chaos. It's a power struggle that teachers are familiar with and I've had to learn as I go. It's my job to control the room and it's the kid's job to wrestle that control away from me. I learn and listen to the professionals, the teachers, and bit by bit get better at it...on some days.
   
   The teachers have taught me some great tricks. Last year I learned the counting trick. Just start counting backwards: 10, 9, 8... If you run out of time, start at 5. I don't know why, but it works - the kids settle down. I also learned that auditions are important. To be committed, the kids need to feel that they earned their place in the club. And I need to set boundaries and enforce them. I've had to fire some students from Shakespeare Club. It's better for the group and for the child - everyone learns something from it.
   
   One student that I kicked out of Shakespeare Club came back later - not to act, because he had given up that privilege - but to handle the lighting board. He turned his behavior around 180 degrees. At the end of the year, he wrote in his journal, "Thank you for giving me another chance." This year, his little brother wants to run lights. It's becoming a family tradition!


4. What can others do to support your cause?
   
   I started my blog Teaching Will as a way to get the stories of these kids out into the world. They're learning to scan iambic verse. They're performing. They're studying character, and writing in their journals. And you can see the results in their regular school work.
   
   I would love to see Shakespeare clubs pop up all over the country but, in lieu of that dream, I hope people read these stories and get inspired to do something in a public school. One-on-one reading with some little kid is hugely gratifying and can make a gigantic difference in a child's future.
   
   Support my cause by starting your own.

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