Seeing S.P.O.T.S. again

Program uses

improvisational theater to educate teens

about tough situations

By KURT NESBITT

Journal Staff Writer

NEW ULM -- The camera is rolling. The audience, mostly teenagers in black T-shirts, sits in wait.

The boombox thumps out music, and the scene begins.

This one's a beauty pageant about sexually-transmitted diseases. There's Miss Chlamydia and Miss Herpes, Mr. Gonorrhea and Ms. Syphilia; the queen is Miss HIV.

Sam Nelson, 16, is acting as emcee for a STD beauty pageant. Lined up along the wall behind him are five so-called contestants, all primping and smiling and preening like they're on a real Miss America broadcast. The questions Nelson has are the usual beauty-pageant fare.

"If we saw you on the street, what would you look like?" he booms boisterously, pretending to hold a microphone.

The contestant, Mr. Gonorrhea, smiles confidently and responds accurately, giving matter-of-fact information about the disease.

He never breaks his smug, confident mug and simply struts back to the wall after the question-and-answer session is over.

The audience laughs, but the subject of the scene isn't supposed to be funny.

Nonetheless, 24 New Ulm middle and high school students participated in the latest training session for Students Performing On Tough Situations (S.P.O.T.S), an improvisational theater group formed a year ago.

The session took place Wednesday and Thursday at Redeemer Lutheran Church in New Ulm.

The forum encourages participants to open themselves up more when they're in S.P.O.T.S. groups.

"I like the fact that we can be ourselves here," said 15-year old Kayleigh Dietz, a sophomore at New Ulm Senior High School.

Nelson, a sophomore at New Ulm Senior High School, is considered a veteran even though it's only his second year in S.P.O.T.S. He has experience in ice shows and musicals.

"They called me up and they said they thought I'd be a good asset to the group. I had the time, so I did it," Nelson said.

Other S.P.O.T.S. veterans assisted the session by directing the rehearsals. Some came back with new ideas of their own.

"They were quick learners," Nelson said of the newcomers. "But it was easy because they were real open-minded about it."

Training for S.P.O.T.S is a two-day affair. The first day is spent encouraging bonding among participants. Then the would-be actors and actresses go into what Cornerstone Productions' Paul Hansen calls "skill-building" -- where S.P.O.T.S. members concentrate on stage presence, voice projection, body language and gesturing.

"The challenge is being a performer," Hansen said. "We try to get them to be bigger on stage. It's tough to get them to open up."

Troupe members also split into discussion groups, ultimately deciding on the dialog and the subject.

The scenes are mostly improvised, so the players don't necessarily memorize a script -- they memorize a line of action.

"Almost every performance is different because it's improvisational," Hansen said.

On the second day of the session, S.P.O.T.S. players perform their scenes. In addition to the STD beauty pageant, there's a scene about a fight and another one about peer pressure.

After each scene is finished, the actors and actresses remain in character to answer questions from the audience about the issue from their character's point of view. It's called processing, and it's a guided explanation of what is happening in the scene. It specifically serves to educate the audience on how a problem happens and what the correct actions are in a given situation.

Heather Orduna is at her first S.P.O.T.S. training. The 14-year old New Ulm High School freshman said she got involved because she saw one of the group's performances at her school.

"It said acting and that's what I want to do," she said. "Plus, it makes a difference in people's lives."

Orduna has also acted in school plays, but says S.P.O.T.S is tougher because it's more emotional, particularly for her because her stepmother died in a drunk-driving accident. She also says she's witnessed gang fights.

Suggested topics for S.P.O.T.S. theater include depression, suicide, eating disorders. Writing and performing the scenes help teens relate to one another and sometimes even helps expunge older demons.

Kate Braam, a 14-year old sophomore at New Ulm Senior High School, said acting in a scene about anorexia helped exorcise the pain of actually having gone through the experience. After the performance was over, Braam had audience members ask her questions about her struggle, and that took away some of the hurt.

"When you see people's reactions, you know they feel what you feel," Braam said. "There are a few people in the audience who look away, but they hear what you're saying too."

The growing roster of actors and actresses hail from Minnesota Valley Lutheran, New Ulm Area Catholic Schools and River bend Alternative Learning Schools.

S.P.O.T.S. isn't about what Kristen Hildebrand, youth program coordinator for Healthy Children Healthy Youth, calls "at-risk youth." Every child in the New Ulm area is given an opportunity to join, and while some S.P.O.T.S members are, in fact, speaking from experience when they're on stage, the group is not designed to be a treatment program.

"It's not 'at-risk youth.' It's youth development to avoid risk behaviors," said University of Minnesota Extension Service Coordinator Katie Rassmussen as she watched one group perform.

Hildebrand and Rassmussen, another leader of the group, say the idea of having a group where teens speak to their peers isn't a new idea, although S.P.O.T.S. is the first group of this type than anyone can recall.

S.P.O.T.S started in New Ulm one year ago with grants from 4-H and Kraft Foods, who still sponsor the program today. The idea to bring S.P.O.T.S to New Ulm came after Healthy Children Healthy Youth Director Susan Ward saw a similar performance at a HCHY conference in Minneapolis three years ago. She recruited Cornerstone Productions through Laura Clark-Hansen, whom she met at another HCHY conference in Minneapolis last year.

Clark-Hansen began doing educational theater because she learned an important lesson in what she calls "prevention education".

"I knew lectures don't work," Clark-Hansen said. "What really works is kids reaching out to kids. I thought it would be cool to teach kids how to do it."

The S.P.O.T.S troupe played close to 18 shows last year.