Each fall, Valerie Methot puts out a call. The executive director of Some Assembly Theatre Company has been working on collaborative productions building community, awareness and wellness with a focus on building dialogue around diverse issues, for the better part of two decades.
But, for the last 15 years Methot and her team of professional theatre artists have reached out to youth across the lower mainland, producing original plays focussed on issues facing teens, with the Roundhouse Youth Theatre Action Group Project.
“Being a youth is a very tough time in one’s life,” Methot says. “We use theatre as a tool to promote social change, and really want to create a forum for youth to be able to share and bring awareness to issues they think are important.”
Missing From Me, this year’s production, takes on abuse, transphobia and the importance of support – topics the youth participants aged 13-18, deemed relevant and worthy of exposure.
Methot describes herself as a “script-weaver” in that she encourages the bulk of the writing to come from the students, then oversees the process ensuring their individual voices are heard, that the essence of what they’re trying to say is clear, and that the story is cohesive.
Over 50 participants working behind the scenes, and in writing and performance roles are all youth, many without any prior theatre experience.
Parker Phelan was compelled to audition after taking in last year’s production, on a group outing with his drop-in queer youth group. For Phelan, who is transgender, Missing From Me has been an experience to educate an audience not familiar with issues facing the average 16-year-old transgender high school student.
“It was a bit hard at first for me to disassociate my personal issues from these topics,” he explains. “But, I’ve been able to express myself a lot better and to put down words in the script I was never able to say out loud to other people.”
For many of the students involved, the confidence built on stage transfers to a passion for change in real life. Phelan will travel to Toronto later this month to attend a queer conference to learn skills around properly running a Gay Straight Alliance, in the hope of resurrecting the one at his high school that died when funding for pizza was cut.
“It’s important to me to try and figure out what kind of hope we can give our audience, and give our youth and in this play, it’s the importance of supporting one another. In doing so, we gain inner strength,” says Methot.
“There was one adult in my life who listened to me when I was young, and that’s what I want to do for them. It’s a super powerful thing, because adults who see this production will be so moved by this play. I think this is a way to build bridges between youth and adults.”
• Missing From Me runs May 4-7 at Roundhouse Community Arts and Recreation Centre. Admission is free.
