A young black man stands in the middle of a bare floor, holding a broom. He’s quiet, passive, virtually paralyzed. Standing next to him is another young black man, high-strung and shouting at nerve-racking volume: “Stop standing there and go out and do something with your life! Stop staying in these fucking boxes, missions, airports. Jesus! I don’t know why God put me in this body!”
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Take Mark Dorsey, for instance. He’s the young man holding the broom. About a year ago, Mark was fired from his janitorial job because he didn’t follow his supervisor’s instructions. A very introverted man who has trouble expressing himself, Mark believes that he was set up–that the supervisor ordered him to perform a task not on his schedule, then fired him when he stuck to his original schedule. Mark’s side of the story comes through loud and clear in the show, but it’s not unchallenged. The scene, as it was developed improvisationally by Dorsey and others in the LAPD workshops, airs other viewpoints too. Perhaps Dorsey’s problem was due to his own timidity; or perhaps–as Julious Jenkins, the actor who has assumed the role of Dorsey’s alter ego, states–he is the source of his own problems because he failed to follow orders. In fact, it was Jenkins’s angry criticism of Dorsey’s material during one rehearsal that gave the upcoming piece its provocative subtitle: I Ain’t Doin’ No Material That Make My People Look Dumb, Stupid, Lazy, or Artistic.
“There’s a stereotype that ‘community art is bad art,’” says John Malpede, LAPD’s 44-year-old founder and artistic director. “That’s an easy way in which things are dismissed, but it’s often true. In our work, we don’t try to cosmeticize anything. Obviously, in what we’re doing there’s some belief that art matters–that it contributes to the betterment of society. But we’re not going to put restrictions on the art to make it conform in advance to some value structure. This isn’t about ‘upgrading people’ or anything like that. It’s about embracing the reality that exists.”
Dorsey is another potential success story for LAPD. Though too shy to take part in workshops at Cooper’s Place at first, the 29-year-old caught the attention of a company member because he was watching the sessions with such intensity. Invited to participate, Dorsey said he didn’t feel he was an actor, but he had some ideas for scenes–including his own account of being fired.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photos/John Sundlof.
