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THE SQUEEGEE
FINAL REPORT The cast members of Squeegee wished to have only their first names used in the program and media material so that they could not be tracked down easily by family members who had been abusive towards them. In order to protect their confidentiality further in this report, I have changed all of their names. This applies to all of the cast except Michael Halverson, who was also the Youth Co-ordinator on the project, and who has agreed to be identified. In May 1998 I offered to do a one day freebie workshop for The Gathering Place, a community centre in Vancouver's downtown core that has a high street youth demographic. Wendy Wood, the Youth Programmer and her Youth Committee were delighted with the prospect of bringing street-involved youth and Vancouver City Police together to spend a day investigating the interface between the two, with the day finishing in a public Rainbow of Desire event that looked at some of the issues raised in the workshop. We called the event Cops and Sneakers. When I showed up for the workshop there were eight youth and no police. They had agreed to participate but didn't show up at the last minute. What were we to do? I talked with the youth and we agreed that while the Cops were not in the room, they were still in our heads and so we decided to go ahead with the work and to turn the evening performance into a Cops in the Head event instead. The evening started with a series of theatrical images. The first image was a young girl in the back of a Police car, being beat up by the Police. Alone. Helpless. Real. The second Image was a young man, handcuffed, on his belly, being beat up by the Police. Alone. Helpless. Real. We animated these Images with the audience and the reaction was, of course, very strong. We offered them two stories and they chose this one: A young man (Wanky) comes down the stairs at the Hotel that is his home. A guy in a Biker Jacket stops him, demands his ID. The Biker is an Undercover Cop. The Young Man has been identified as a Coke Dealer by a woman who is working on the street. He is innocent. The woman has "fingered" him because she doesn't know him and needs to "offer up" someone to keep herself "safe". In the moment, instead of keeping his cool, he gets very aggressive with t he Police, which just makes matters worse. Even though the audience was small, engagement was very high. The internal voices in the exercise offered (the Cops in the Head) were insightful: A friend who was saying "Just give them what they want", a father who was saying "fight him", a mother who was saying "dump your frustration on him" and a Macho Hollywood Movie Icon that was saying "blow the Cop away". Analysis of these different voices and how to deal with them was terrific. A suggestion for how to deal with the frustrated mother voice was to take the frustration and work it out on the dance floor in a club -- not with the police where it would lead to more trouble. An insight into the friend voice that was saying "just give them what they want" was to acknowledge that this was a very defeated place for this Youth....."where does it stop?".......giving in this deeply will lead to further oppression. After the event people hung around and expressed their gratitude for the insights. The workshop participants said over and over again what a great time they had had. Wanky's story stayed with me. Shortly after, Vancouver City Council started passing new by-laws and reinforcing existing ones that made a number of activities harder to do in Vancouver. Namely, busking, panhandling and squeegee-ing. The criminalizing of these activities that poor people (in particular street-youth) do was part of a trend that was sweeping the country. It occurred to me that my home was getting invaded at least three times a week by newspaper companies, carpet cleaning companies, all kinds of legitimate businesses that were calling me at all hours trying to s ell me something that I didn't want and it was perfectly legal, but if a kid walked up to my car at a red light and tried to sell me a perceived service (cleaning my windshield with a squeegee) this was now illegal. What was going on? What was it that was being made illegal? Aggressive selling? Or in-our-faces poverty? And so the idea of doing a play with street-youth on issues of criminalization of youth was hatched. I talked with Wendy, Wanky and some other people in the community, some of whom eventually formed a community partnership committee and got great feedback. A proposal got written. Fundraising happened over about a year. We managed to raise $44,000 from various sources: The Vancouver Foundation was the first to come on board, then VanCity Credit Union, Human Resources Development Council, the McLean, Hamber and Koerner Foundations, the Georgia Straight. We subsidized another $25,790 of the budget with operating grants and a small surplus from the previous fiscal year. The amount of funds were necessary partly to create infrastructure. It was obvious, for instance, that if the actors were street youth, they were going to need shelter for the duration of the project. Otherwise, how could they focus? It was also going to be important to pay them a living wage. Minimum wage for Canadian Actors' Equity Association is $386 a week. We set salaries at $500 a week. We were also going to need a full-time youth co-ordinator and a counselor on the project to deal with the various issues that were bound to arise. I hired Michael Halverson as youth co-ordinator. Michael and I met in an elevator going to a meeting with DanceArts Vancouver. We both had shorts on and were carrying black briefcases. We got to talking. Realizing he was in his early 20's and that he was connected to the issues (Michael had come out of the street himself and was now involved in lots of youth action) I told him about the project. He already knew about Headlines. It was a natural fit. Michael organized shelter, networked almost all of the participants, organized follow-up programs, and helped with publicity. He was also (unfortunately) to get drafted into acting in the play three days before we opened. He was invaluable. I also hired Sam Bob to be the project counselor. Sam did OUT OF THE SILENCE (family violence) with me in 1992 as an actor. He has been through pretty much the same process this cast is going to go through. As well as understanding THEATRE FOR LIVING, he also recently got his counseling certificate from the Native Education Centre, and has been working with Street-Youth at the Vancouver Aboriginal Friendship Centre. Perfect. We ran a graphics competition in the street. A young woman named Ivy won. Winning meant getting $300 plus another honorarium for her time, and being put together with our graphic arts team, Five Smooth Stones, to turn the graphic into a postcard, poster and bus shelter. The results were great. Ivy learned a lot and the poster is a "true voice". View poster |