As a professional performer, Josie Whittlesey always wanted to do more and in 2013 created Drama Club, using her master’s in acting to bring theater games and training to incarcerated youth in NYC.
What is Drama Club?
There are two secure detention facilities in New York City—one in Brownsville, Brooklyn, and one in the South Bronx—and these are where the kids are detained after they’ve been arrested and before they’re placed. We go into these [pretrial] facilities and do eight-week units year-round. We do several productions per facility per year where the parents can come watch. We bring in a scene, have the kids read it, we discuss it, we do some text analysis, we break it down, and then we do improv around the characters in the scene. We [also] do a lot of games and a lot of improv.
Why does Drama Club have such a positive effect?
It’s pure play…or it should be, and these kids are still young enough developmentally that they need play in their lives. It allows them to be kids and to have fun in an environment where that isn’t always possible. [Also], I really believe that theater develops empathy in people, and there’s a direct correlation between empathy and crime. So a growth in empathy will equal a reduction in crime, because it develops understanding and [the ability to] not see everyone as an enemy.
How can actors get involved?
We’re really specifically looking for people with experience working in improv and experience working with vulnerable populations. The only thing is that we ask people to commit to an eight-week unit, because one of the things that’s really lacking in these kids’ lives is any kind of consistency at all.
What are some challenges of this job?
Our No. 1 biggest challenge is the fact that the facilities are so transient. Because they are pretrial, the population is always changing and every single class we teach, there will be a variation in who participates. This is challenging to the facilitators because we always have to take the temperature of the room and can never get used to a class dynamic.
[Another] very real challenge is secondary [PTSD], because I was basically on my own for the first year of Drama Club and I’m an actor, I’m an artist, I’m a sensitive person, and you’re around traumatized kids. So I think you kind of psychically take that on. When new facilitators join I really do kind of give them a pep talk; I always say do what you need to do to take care of yourselves, whether it’s therapy or yoga or taking a hot bath at night. Just acknowledge that this is intense and you need to cool down afterward, however you want to do that.
What advice do you have for those who want to work with underprivileged youth?
When I was an actor I always had this feeling that I wanted something more, and then [I was] afraid of that ’cause I didn’t know what that was and didn’t want it to take me away from acting. [But] when I finally let myself follow my passions and let them kind of lead me on this very strange journey—which is not at all what I expected—I’m just so glad that I let myself follow my love of certain things. And I’m so glad I have a masters in acting and I’m so glad I was a professional actor for several years and can take that experience to where I am now. So I guess just don’t be afraid to follow your passions even if they seem unrelated, because you will find a way to connect them.
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