REFLECTIONS
MICHAEL KROLL
From an email sent to The Beat Within by Michael Kroll, and printed following Omar’s editorial:
On Saturday evening, David Inocencio and I had the painful pleasure of watching a performance at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, called “Delinquent” starring office heavyweights: Omar Turcios and The Beat Within itself. Due to Omar’s modesty, he told very few people about this event, which is a pity, because we wish everyone had seen this very moving performance. The show has but ten performers, each trying to tell his/her own story in a unique way, while the symbols of penal oppression and the effects they have on kids fill the stage in various stylized balletic and gymnastic dances and monologues.
To say we’re proud of Omar is to grossly understate our feelings. The show is, in some way, revolves around his attempt to tell his story, with all sorts of obstacles put in the way of his self-expression. That he ultimately succeeds in getting his story told is not just a testament to the play’s writer/director, Keith Hennessy, but also to The Beat Within. Before the play begins, Writer/ Director Hennessy comes on stage and introduces the concept of the play, then talks about The Beat Within, which becomes like another character. (One of the most moving scenes among so many was when the young actors stand in a circle and read excerpts from The Beat. I doubt if there was a dry eye in the house.) Omar began writing for The Beat while locked up in San Mateo County. During one of those workshops, he asked his Beat facilitator if there might be a place for him at The Beat… That was five years ago… Dave and I stood in awe of Omar’s performance and his willingness to be an actor thrown together with other young men and women from a variety of backgrounds whose paths he might never have crossed but for this play. We believe it’s opened his own mind to the richness of human experiences and his own potential for personal growth and — we hope — the possibility that he could continue acting/performing. In the program, each performer has a paragraph of self-description. Omar says in his, “I am doing what I can and taking these crumbs I got and trying to build castles.”
It is no crumb, no small accomplishment to be a featured player in a production at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. And it is no small accomplishment both for Omar and The Beat to have been selected by Director Keith Hennessy for his production. Hennessy is an award-winning performer/choreographer and the director of Circo Zero Performance.