‘Butterflies’ not free in juvenile detention
Lauren Spencer directs ACT play about black girls
Lauren Spencer had rolled up the cuffs of her jeans and kicked off her shoes to move around the Rueff, a black box performance space perched above ACT’s Strand Theater. But the San Francisco actress, 32, was not rehearsing a role of her own. Spencer is directing “Black Butterflies,” a play commissioned by ACT’s Collaborative Youth Arts Project that brings together programs, artists and resources to tell stories that don’t usually get told.
“That was a seven,” Spencer announced to her young cast. “Let’s take it up to a 10.”
“Black Butterflies” is a groundbreaking work on several levels. Inspired by the Monique Morris book, “Push Out: The Criminalization of Black Girls in Schools,” “Black Butterflies” takes a look at the circumstances and challenges of three teenage girls in a juvenile detention facility. Usually when we’re talking bout kids in jail, we’re talking about boys.
In fact, the play was written by a black man, Darren Canady, and directed by a black woman. The cast is mostly made up of women and girls of color, and women who’ve actually been in these detention facilities have been invited to rehearsal to give Spencer feedback. “Black Butterflies” is also the third play commissioned by the Collaborative Youth Arts Project, which brings together performers
from ACT’s Young Conservatory Program, its Education Program, and Destiny Arts, an Oakland youth program that uses dance, performance and art to instill peace in kids.
The people and players behind every aspect of the program, from the playwright to the teenage actresses spending their summer acting in a jail setting, are artists who don’t normally get the exposure that an institution like ACT can provide.
Grabbing the opportunity, Spencer has reached out to numerous activists and organizations throughout the Bay Area to enrich the premier performances of “Black Butterflies,” including welcoming musicians and spoken word artists to perform after the show and creating an art installation of dozens of black butterflies that guests can see as they arrive and leave the Rueff.
Canady, a professor at the University of Kansas, has stayed connected with the process through visits and Skype sessions. And he’s delighted to have become fast friends with Spencer, a fulltime actress and teaching artist.
“I would work with her again in a heartbeat,” said Canady by phone. “I will say this; she’s a great director, but what I have been most impressed by is her dedication to making the outreach happen with this production.
Spencer is connecting with the subject matter in intensely personal ways. “It seemed so scary to me to direct the piece because it is so big,” she said. “But especially now as artists, we need to do things that are scary.”
One tense scene in “Black Butterflies” involves a missing pencil lost somewhere in the detention center’s classroom. The girls — and the audience — find themselves in a panic. If the pencil cannot be found, each girl must submit to a strip search. After all, pencils are weapons and jail is a violent place. Still, a 15-year-old girl getting a rough pat-down over a pencil is painful to watch.
“I will tell you it was definitely not fun writing it,” explained Canady of the scene. “I have to give Lauren so much respect — and the performers obviously — for figuring out ways to keep it honest but to also not make it sort of like incarceration porn as well. It’s not torturous for the sake of being torturous but being real about what the environment is.”
“Before I was in this play, I never knew what happened in juvenile detention centers,” said 17-year-old actress Amanda Morrow. “The point is that these are children who are dealing with these things.”
Fifteen-year-old San Francisco high school student Tiana Bishop connects with her character, Dani. “I’m an angry kind of person,” Tiana confidently explained. “I do like to spit rhymes, and I do like to dress up kind of boyish. I’m a tomboy, and like, every other girl I’ve met is like hella girlie.”
The actresses in this play about girls in jail are just that — girls. To help her cast let go of the difficult subject matter once they leave the theater, Spencer and her cast have created a daily practice of “de-role-ing” in which the actors surround whomever is leaving for the day and physically wipe the stress and the tension of the story from their bodies. “It allows them to take agency to step into the material,” said Spencer, who occasionally de-roles herself, “and then take agency and self-care as artists and step out.”
After the tough pencil scene, Tiana was ready to leave Dani and the detention center behind and head to Waterworld. “You know, waterslides?” she smiled. “I think it’s in Concord.”
Tiana, who has never performed at such a professional level before, isn’t afraid to get up in front of a theater full of ACT playgoers and tackle the intensity of her role. “I’m not going to give you less,” said Tiana, determined and confident. “I’m going to give you more!”