REFLECTIONS
OMAR TUCIOS, 23, assistant editor The Beat Within, rapper, father
The following appeared in an issue of The Beat Within
On another note, I, myself had the privilege to voice some of the pieces from The Beat Within to a wider audience that probably wasn’t aware that incarcerated kids, or adults had a voice. I had the privilege to be a part of performance that took place at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, in San Francisco. It was a performance that took place last week - three nights, Thursday, Friday, and lastly Saturday night.
It was weird for me at first as the cast consisted of 9 totally different people with different backgrounds (actually 11 if you count the sound engineer that was on stage and prop girl that was on stage too). Nevertheless, we all come from different backgrounds. Many of them never had experience with jail or of criminal justice system. One of the guys (Dawon) lived in foster care all his life. He was a professional hip-hop dancer. One of the girls (Tracy) was a contortionist and used to work at the circus. Another girl (Meghan) was a nanny, a dancer and college graduate. One of the younger girls (Constance) was in her last year of high school and she was a community activist. There was a sixteen year old boy (Nestor) that was on the San Francisco School Board of Education. And there was Jeremy who is an aerial acrobat. He does tricks on ropes high up in the air. Then there was Jorge who was a performer and I believe a college graduate too. And there was another dancer named Trae, who also has experience in the juvenile justice system.
Then there was me, with no performing experience, besides rapping, and maybe if I go back to Middle School when I was in the school play. I had to try to tell my life story about how I came here from Central America, Managua, Nicaragua and how I got involved in gangs. And I had to tell them how I got caught up, and what my experience on trying to fit in as an immigrant. I also had to briefly tell my tale about the juvenile system, and the adult system because I’m on felony probation for weapons charges too.
And then there was the producer of the show named Keith Hennessy, who is a very talented man, and a well-known performer and producer. He is also an activist with a strong compassion for the injustices that go on in this world.
At first one of the only reasons I agreed to do this show is because he told me he was going to pay me, let’s just say a pretty good amount of money (enough to buy a decent bucket or scraper at that). There were times that I thought I wasn’t going to pull through with it because of work (here at The Beat Within), plus, I also got twin daughters to take care of, but I had made a commitment and decided to go through with it a hundred percent and gave it my best shot.
As we got closer and closer to the show I didn’t know what it was going to look like and I didn’t think it was anything special at first.
All I kept thinking about is that we’re performing for a bunch of people that are, one, probably ignorant, and don’t want to hear about people that are locked away and have no voice. But boy was I wrong.
The first night of the performance I was nervous as hell and not to mention hung over. Haha.
Each scene had different people in it. Anyway we got to the point of the show where we read some deep pieces –Beat pieces - that some of y’all writers probably wrote.
After that there was a hip hop dance by Dawon, and we built a box around him locking him up. So for the rest of the show he was locked up, and nobody could see him.
But in the end I got to tell my story, and not only that, when the show was over we left the dude in the box. Our performance was so powerful that people were crying. It was something I had never seen before. And when it was over I felt like our show impacted those people.
Over 700 people got to see the show over the course of those three nights – all shows were sold out. And everybody came up to me after the show talking about how it changed things for them, how they loved it, how they cried and how moved they were. We even had a question and answer Friday night, after the performance, and most of the audience stayed for that. It was an amazing experience. They had asked me about the pieces that we spoke, the ones that y’all wrote (The Beat Within pieces). They asked us how we thought our peers would think of the performance and they asked us why we did it.
I must admit that this show had a powerful reaction to me and to everyone. I learned a lot from other people that were on and off the show, and I learned a lot about myself. I told them that the show meant a lot to me because we got to give everyone a voice that normally don’t have a voice, to a crowd that are not use to hearing that voice.
So this issue and my work in “Delinquent”†are dedicated to all you that are reading this right now. If you think no one is listening to you think again. Again about 700 plus people got to listen to you this past weekend. Even though they didn’t listen to all of you, they listened to some of you and realized that there are more of you there that can no longer be ignored! One love to everybody locked down! Shouts out to Keith Hennessy the producer/director of the show, and to everyone that was on the cast! It was a pleasure working with y’all!