The girls filed in first. About twenty of them. White girls, latinas. Sallow and devastated looking. Scowling too, as if to ask, "What do I have to endure next?" All with their arms self-straightjacketed. They sat in the front two rows of blue plastic chairs. I was already playing the twelve string guitar. Usually I only play for little kids when they come in for a show, but I figured these kids could use some nice music. I looked at each one, tried to make the music calming and beautiful, and at last, once they were all seated, asked the girls, "How are you all doing?"
They looked a little shocked. "I’m just going to play music for you until everybody gets here," I said, then went back to playing, basically ignoring them, letting the music do its work.
"They’ll bring the boys in next," I thought to myself. I’d been told before I was let in through the gates and laundry area that if I heard the word "Down!" called by any of the guards that anyone who did not immediately hit the floor would be pepper sprayed in the face, and that the kids knew this rule. The matron had a truncheon at her belt. The girls looked like they’d already been sprayed.
The boys filed in, flanked by guards. Big guards. With two empty rows of chairs dividing them from the girls up front, they sat further back, arms tight across their chests. I realized that this measure was to prevent them from even thinking about striking out at anybody. Probably happens a lot, I thought.
Later, Roy told me that my show had been the first time in the history of Modesto’s Juvenile Hall that all the kids had been allowed in the same room together. The fishbowl room in which I was performing was ringed by unused cells. In each cell, a plexiglass window looked in on a stainless steel toilet with no seat and a single steel bed platform. Windowless cells. Ecru paint. Prison, I thought. Prison 101.
The male guards stood by along with supervisory personnel, all rather worried looking. Like hawks, they scrutinized the youthful offenders, expecting some sort of fight, I guess. But the kids were listening to the guitar music. The score for The Rage of Hercules, the story I was there to tell, has some pretty good guitar work in it.
Rob, my roadie, had turned the PA up loud.
"If all else fails," I had told him, "at least we’ll be able to blow them through the walls."
I wasn’t particularly worried, however. I’d been to Modesto, California months earlier, in May, and had told this hour-long redaction of my hundred-minute mythic adventure to 150 inmates at the Men’s Honor Farm in the shadows of razorwire and guards with nine millimeters. The cons had given me a standing ovation and lined up for autographs, so I knew that for these kids, a story about a great hero, haunted by rage, imprisoned against his will in the Underworld, would probably work for them, too. A mild current of anxiety bubbled up unexpectedly. I suppressed it. What if these teens decided I was too old to be cool? My beard is turning white. I slick my hair back like some wag out of The Great Gatsby. I dress in black. I’m not pretty. What if, in the first few moments of the story, they decided to hate the whole thing? That would make for a very long hour indeed.
Roy Stevens, my opera singer friend, under whose auspices I’ve been brought out here for the second time, gave his standard introduction for me. Makes me sound more important than I am, if the truth be told, but it helps. Lincoln Center. Off-Broadway. The White House. Travels the world. So on and so forth. And then I spoke to them in my normal voice.
"In the ancient Greek world," I began, "when you died, you didn’t go to heaven or hell. Whether you were good or bad, if you were mortal, you died and went to the Underworld. There you became a shade, and lost your voice forever."
I let that sink in.
"The God of the Dead was Hades, and his wife was named Persephone. Oh, and one other thing: a centaur is a mythological beast, half-man, half-horse. I hope you find this tale entertaining. This is called The Rage of Hercules."
And off I went into the tale.
With teen audiences, the first few moments of a show are critical. Being highly critical themselves, and very easily bored, and not prone to liking storytelling in the first place, one must capture their imaginations immediately out of the gate. With these kids, I was unsure whether I had any innate imagination to work with in the first place. I start Hercules with wind, then the sound of a man falling from above, closer and closer, until he lands with a boom. The first character voice they heard was Hades:
"Welcome, Hercules."
"Who are you? I can’t see you!" the baffled hero responds.
"Let your eyes adjust. This black throne doesn’t look familiar?"
And so the interview between Hercules, freshly dead, and the carping couple, Persephone and Hades, began. An hour later, the story would close, I knew, with Hercules, the great sufferer, meeting at last his absent father, Zeus, and rising up to Olympus.
But that was a long way off. The critical juncture for a teen audience is when Persephone first speaks. I use lots of women’s voices in my stories, but it’s always a risk. Some kids will snicker at first, as if to say, who is this fool? But I’ve learned to roll right over them, keep on going, and wait for the silence to descend. It usually takes about a minute. They start imaging. Then it’s no longer a storyteller sitting there. It’s a young goddess trapped in the Underworld.
"Oh Hercules, I long for news of the living," she says. I watched them carefully. Nobody snickered. They were all very still. A few minutes later, as Hercules recounts how Hera tried to murder him with serpents when he was a baby, he laughs at how he didn’t know what they were, and thought it was funny. This is the audience’s first opportunity to laugh. Sometimes they don’t.
But a young latina, off to my left, smiled and laughed. Some of the boys in the back smiled. I was heartened, but of course didn’t show it, because Hercules is telling the story in character voice. Me, I’m way in the background, running things.
I recall at one point, midway through the tale, I took note of the girls’ expressions. Gone were the shocked, devastated faces. The boys were all sitting forward, too, paying undeviating attention. Wow, I thought to myself, this is working.
And so, an hour later, I arrived at Hercules’ immolation, his meeting with his father Zeus, and his apotheosis as he rises to Olympus. The tale ends with a musical theme, a warm, rich motif that signifies the opening of Hercules’ hardened heart. I played it, and struck the final chord. Applause erupted, and smiles, but then, standing there, I didn’t know what to do. I left the chair and thanked them for their kind attention, but nobody got up. The guards just stood there.
The kids just sat there.
This is weird, I thought. Get up and leave now please. Nobody moved. So, I walked around to in front of the mics and asked, "Any questions?"
The young latina who had laughed first put up her hand.
"Where can you get that book?" she asked. "A book of Greek Myths should have it," I answered.
A young man raised his hand. "How do you remember all those words?" he asked.
"Well," I smiled, "I’m a professional storyteller. If I don’t remember them, I’m going to look like a Class A chump up here." They all laughed. "Did you guys see a kind of movie in your minds?" I asked. Hands went up.
"I see the same movie, and just tell what I see."
The Q&A session finally ended. The matron was beaming. I do believe I saw the warden (a woman) quite flushed, as if she were working to stave off tears, but I could be wrong. The kids filed out, back to whatever hell they endure in lockup. Rob and I packed up and left after thanks from the guards and staff.
Two days later, one of the guards showed up at one of my public family shows. Brought his kids. Said the juvvies had been talking about how Hercules was just like them, but that despite all his mistakes, it had worked out all right in the end.
Last I heard, Juvenile Hall is trying to get the money to get me back before I leave to tell the story to the twenty dangerous ones.
