Theater group inspires teens in Harlem
It’s Saturday afternoon, and Jamal Joseph is coaching 30 or so kids through a rehearsal in Prentis Hall, a Columbia building on 125th Street facing the construction pit that will become the new Manhattanville campus.
He stands up and holds his fist in the air. Immediately, solemnly, the kids and teens around him, who have been chatting, dancing, singing, and laughing, stop and do the same thing.
“What is Impact?” Joseph asks quietly.
They respond in unison. “It’s not a game!”
“What is Impact?”
“It’s not a game!”
“Why is it not a game?”
“Because what we do now matters forever!”
Joseph is chairman of the film division at the School of the Arts and a founder of Impact Repertory Theater in Harlem, a youth arts organization dedicated to what Joseph calls artivism—the combination of art and activism.
At Impact, the students come from Harlem, the Bronx, and Queens and range in age from eight years old to alums who have returned after college to teach at 28. They sing, dance, act, and rap. They tease each other. They get angry at each other. But most of all, they say they try not to judge each other.
“The idea of a safe space among young people is a primary idea, a place where they can come and obviously be physically safe, but also a place that allows them to be who they are without judgment,” Joseph said. “We have kids who are homeless, we have straight kids, gay kids, skinny, heavy, and as the face of Harlem begins to change, we do too.”
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In 1992, Joseph, along with two friends and his wife, founded Impact with nine kids in the basement of a Harlem community center. The program quickly grew, and Impact earned a place in the international spotlight in 2007 when they were featured in the movie August Rush singing a song that Joseph co-wrote called “Raise It Up.”
Less than a year later, Joseph and 25 members of Impact were performing “Raise It Up” onstage at the 80th Academy Awards, having snagged a nomination for Best Original Song.
Today, Impact has grown into a current class of 78 students and almost 1000 alumni.
“When I first came, I knew it was going to be good, but then I realized that I would have another family,” 12-year-old Jabari Salley said. “At Impact I feel safe from the streets, safe to get a good education and to talk about things like Japan and Haiti.”
When asked what he wants to be in the future, Jabari answers, “Director.”
Everyone except for his mother, Asia Salley, is confused. Director of what?
“Of Impact,” he answers, nonplussed. Salley smiles.
Former Impact student and current artistic consultant Carlton Taylor is also resting nearby. He was one of those 25 performers at the Oscars, with a voice more powerful than most. He probably has the talent for a Broadway musical, but chooses to come back on Saturdays and help Impact rehearse for their musical.
“My father was murdered when I was 14, right before I joined Impact. And we had this song called ‘Gunz’ that affected me because of what I had experienced—my mother was a cop, and my dad died from gun violence.”
He hums a bit of the lyrics, stopping on the line that describes a child growing up without a father.
“The song reminded me of all the things I would never get to do with my father,” he said. “It’s been 12 years since my dad died—I’m 26 now. At the time, singing this song made me feel active, like I could do something if even one person can hear the song and make a better choice.”
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Kids like Taylor and Jabari can seem like visions of a young Jamal Joseph, who grew up in a foster home between the Bronx and Harlem and never knew his father. By 15, he had joined the Black Panthers. By 21, he had been arrested and convicted in the famous 1970 New Haven Black Panther trials.
His activities as a Panther included, ironically, protesting on the steps of Low Library—steps he now walks as a Columbia professor.
It was in the federal penitentiary at Leavenworth where Joseph began to flourish as an artist and activist.
“Prison can be a very creative place,” Joseph said. “A lot of times you’ll walk by on your way to your cell and you’ll see incredible paintings, guys who taught themselves to paint, people are playing instruments, they’re singing. I found a new way of revolution. In the Black Panthers, we thought it was with guns. In prison, I realized it was with art.”
He describes his attempt at writing a play for Black History Month while in prison, in which he cast only black prisoners. While rehearsing in the courtyard, which Joseph described as segregated between black, Latino, and white prisoners, a big name from the Latino section approached Joseph.
“At first we thought they were there to fight us,” Joseph said. But then the guy said, ‘Yo, I don’t think that guy really is doing his character, homes.’”
Joseph rewrote the play to include a part for him.
“Then a couple of guys from the white gang came, because they thought the blacks and Mexicans were teaming up to do something,” Joseph said. “We gave them a part too, and before we knew it we had a multicultural group.”
Today, Joseph believes that a lot of Harlem’s problems are the same as the ones he faced growing up—drugs, violence, and poverty. Impact focuses on developing its students’ creative talents, but also requires them to earn good grades and to learn about current events and leadership.
“The things I was lacking in childhood, like having role models and a safe environment, shows up in my work at Impact,” Joseph said. “Having the feeling of just wanting to belong, wanting to feel safe, wanting to express who I was. Every kid goes through that, right? And here we are, going on 7 o’clock.”
He points around the room, where over half of Impact’s kids remain, even though practice ended two hours ago. They don’t want to leave.
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At Impact, songs and conversations address topics as diverse as poverty, politics, gun violence, and sex. One girl proclaims in the song “For City Girls,” “If you can be with her when you bust a nut, maybe you can be with her when she has your child.”
“To us there are no taboo subjects, because with young people there are no taboo issues,” Joseph said. “They have to deal with it all. When these kids think, ‘Wait, my life is important? What I’m going though is important?’ That’s when—although it’s an overused word—but that’s when the sense of empowerment comes in.”
At the leadership training session before rehearsal, the students watch a slideshow about the Japan earthquake on the New York Times website, talk about their recent performance at the United Nations, and present poems they have written.
Mi-Chal Ryan, a 15-year-old aspiring actress, presents her piece. Her first line is, “There is a difference between things you can’t remember, and things you can’t forget.”
Joseph makes note of Ryan and looks over her poem afterward, impressed.
“I was lying in my bed one day, and I was thinking about how my mom got cancer and I couldn’t forget the day when she walked into the house and everyone was crying,” Ryan explained later. “So that’s when I thought, there’s a difference between some things I remember, like when there’s things that make me feel good, and then things that I can’t forget no matter what.”
But if there is anything Impact kids can do, it is survive.
The group has managed to as well, even though they’ve been left with financial difficulties after the spotlight on Impact quickly died down after their Oscars performance.
A nonprofit organization, Impact doesn’t charge its participants (though Joseph notes, “There’s no cost, but it’s not free. They work for it.”).
And while Impact has received contributions from individuals and corporations as varied as Amtrak and JPMorgan Chase, the theater is still what Joseph calls a “hand-to-mouth organization.” Between administrative costs and program costs like the free lunches offered to students, Impact costs a few hundred thousand dollars to run each year.
“We get some donations, but we barely get enough. It’s always tough here,” Joseph said, attributing the group’s survival to its network of alumni.
From 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. every Saturday, however, it doesn’t seem so tough in this Prentis Hall room. The kids practice hard, and they know they are talented.
Joseph knows it too. In the middle of rehearsal, he picks up a call on his cell phone.
“Hey,” he says into the phone, and holds it up toward the music. “Listen.”
daphne.chen@columbiaspectator.com