Runaways

I visited New York the summer I was 18. Being the lunatic that I was, I drained my bank account and went to eight or nine plays while I was there. Today the only ones I can date to that particular trip are three musicals: “On the Twentieth Century,” an underrated Comden and Green show that starred Madeline Kahn, John Cullum, Imogene Coca, and Kevin Kline; yet another revival of “The King and I” starring Yul Brynner (Yul was already  63, and, God love him, he would perform the role in yet another Broadway revival eight years later just before his death); and a brand new musical starring a bunch of unknown kids that was written and directed by a young woman named Elizabeth Swados. It was called “Runaways” and it...blew...me...away.

I had wandered into the Plymouth theatre that night in 1978 without any expectations of what this show was. It was raw, rough around the edges, and depressing as hell, but more exciting and vibrant than anything I’d ever seen on the stage. It’s impossible to imagine anything even remotely like “Runaways” getting funded today. For one thing, the show pulls no punches in the way it depicts the difficult lives of kids in the late 1970s.  Even the happy “up” songs feature lines about abuse and other horrors. For over a year, without a script or any songs, Swados was subsidized by Public Theatre impresario Joseph Papp and his New York Shakespeare Festival to interview actual children living on the streets and slowly put together a musical theatre piece that conveyed what they were dealing with. “I wanted to make a collage about the profound effects of our deteriorating families,” Swados said. “I wanted to explore the substitutes people find to deal with the loss of family and how these substitutes are sometimes effective and sometimes self-destructive. I wanted to tap the energy of young people.”

Swados interviewed over two thousands kids in New York schools and community centers as she developed the piece, using many of their stories in the lyrics. Some of the real street kids ended up in the actual show. Others in the cast included thirteen-year-old Diane Lane playing a child prostitute, Carlo Imperato, who would later appear in the TV series “Fame,” Josie de Guzman, who would win kudos for her starring role in revivals of “Guys and Dolls” and “West Side Story,” Trini Alvarado, who starred in several movies and later would play Anne Frank in a crazy musical version of her diary that I saw Off-Broadway, and Toby Parker, Sarah Jessica’s older brother who was also in the original cast of “Rent.”

There is no real plot to “Runaways.” The show consists of songs, monologues, poems, and dances about how this group of 28 kids ended up abandoned by their families or society. Can you imagine pitching that to a Broadway producer today? Never gonna happen. Especially in a show so devoid of schmaltziness or cliché. Of course it resonated completely with young audiences at the time (including me) who, even if they weren’t living on the street, could relate to many of the issues addressed in the play. Why do we think kids can’t handle the truth in art? It’s no accident that Leah’s two favorite musicals are “Rent” and “Spring Awakening,” two shows that definitely do not shy away from difficult subjects.

Elizabeth Swados herself recognized that the success of “Runaways” was a total fluke. “It was the right place, the right time,” she said. “It was never meant to go to Broadway. It was meant to be a sort of community service piece where we took it around and we put it up for a few weeks.  Instead, Swados ended up getting nominated for five Tony Awards for “Runaways” and spent years living down this early success. “Now its not so bad,” Swados said recently, “but it took, I think, 15 years for people to get off my back. Everything was implied, from the fact that I was not talented and I was lucky to I was sleeping with Joe Papp.”

Just to give you a feel for how outside the current mainstream this musical was, here's a bit of a monologue performed by a 13-year-old boy during the first half of the play when asked to give a report on current events:

At eight fifty-five Monday evening my father hit my mother across her mouth.
They're kidnapping people all over the world.
Patty Hearst went crazy and got free.
In Detroit there's a crazy guy who's shooting kids in the face.
Oh mom, don't let that happen to me.
In Bronx State Hospital a junkie killed his shrink.
There are no more air raid drills 'cause it won't matter.
And all these books are coming out and saying
That the C.I.A. killed Kennedy,
The F.B.I. killed Martin Luther King.
Kennedy tried to kill Castro.
I usually don't think about these things.
I play baseball or make models in my room,
But it's current events and you're asking me.
And my parents are becoming a statistic: a divorce.
And I am becoming a statistic: a fucked up kid.
And a pretty brunette is sending love letters to the Son of Sam.
And though I'm not political
I hear the Shah of Iran cuts off people's hands.
And when I play guitar
Sometimes my fingers turn numb and I get this pain in my gut.
And I ask myself, "What am I working so hard for?"
Just to be a statistic?
I'm scared and that's current events.
Helter Skelter's a best seller,
Snipers are everywhere on the roofs.
And I read yesterday that prostitution has become prosperous around Disneyland.
And a crazy guy in Detroit is shooting kids in the face,
And more family murders have taken place in the last year
Than in all of Northern Ireland,
And I don't want my family to die.
And that's today's especially discouraging summary of facts.
And I feel like crying,
But please don't flunk me.
Please don't flunk me.

I wish this play had been recorded on film because it’s definitely of its time and will probably never receive a major staging again. For years I longed to hear the haunting soundtrack again and then finally, a few years ago, it was released on CD. This is the only video clip I've ever seen of the original show. It's a medley from the 1978 Tony Awards and is a bit hackneyed (notice the not-very-good skateboarder aimlessly moving across the stage) but it gives a flavor of the startling, dynamic production:

 

I’ve been thinking of “Runaways” this week following my viewing of “The Race to Nowhere,” the documentary I wrote about in my previous post. I received a thoughtful comment from the college-age daughter of some friends of mine. Sarah took issue with the more dramatic concerns expressed in the film and she ended her comment with the following story:

When my mother saw the movie “Thirteen,” I was about fourteen or fifteen years old. I think she's only just recently stopped being afraid that I’ll stop going to class and start popping pills and having random sex. We need to stop making dramatic movies that instill even more anxiety into parents than they already experience. Because you know what? We're okay, and we're going to be okay.

I laughed at this last comment because I was also terrified by that film. When Leah turned 13 worried for a long time that she would suddenly start dating bikers and doing drugs just like Evan Rachel Wood did in the film.

I think Sarah is right in that most of the kids we worry about are okay and are going to be okay. But I also think that kids today do face many very intense pressures and challenges, some very similar to the ones we faced and some that are wildly different. Yes, many of us parents are prone to anxiety, but if anything, I think that as the years pass we are more likely to dismiss the difficult parts of adolescence because we just don’t want to think about it. We know life will go on for most of these kids who are sad or depressed or scared so we dismiss how truly painful it can be to be a kid. And some kids, sadly, will not emerge unscathed from these years.

I’m not saying that there’s very much we could do about it if we were privy to our children’s full range of emotions instead of just the reserved palette they choose to show us. God know I always told my parents I was “fine” no matter how I was feeling because the last thing I wanted was their misguided if well-meaning intervention. Sure, there are times when we can provide a supportive ear or strategy but I think the hardest part of being a parent is learning to LET your children experience pain without always trying to fix it.

Here's a video clip from a benefit concert version of "Runaways" performed last year:

 

Comments

[Margie]

Just change some of the actual events and the 13 year old's monologue could easily fit today--or would it be even worse? "Please don't close my school. Please don't close my school."

[Laurie (Sarah's Mom)]

Isn't that funny-- I don't even remember seeing the movie "Thirteen". I am glad to hear that Sarah is okay and actually I have not worried about her for a while. She is incredibly talented, bright and ambitious and her love of learning has continued to shine through despite the the tremendous pressures in our educational system.

Currently, a senior and a philosophy major at UC Berkeley, she has the opportunity to sit at the feet of and learn from some of the best professors in the world.

Not every student, however, is as bright and ambitious as Sarah. They often get beaten down and lost in the intensity of academic pressure and are not prepared for a career that will fit who they are.

Teaching to a test and this latest idea of Obama's to pay teachers more whose students do better on a test is not what education is about.

Education is supposed to lift up students, help them feel good about themselves as they learn, and nurture their love of learning. It is supposed to help children find their talents and capabilities and nurture those into a successful career.

We, as a society, have gotten lost in the rigors of reading, writing and arithmetic and forgotten what real education is all about.

[Gordon]

Dear Danny,
I think that most teenagers from every generation are conflicted and confused, and anxious to get out from under their parents system of rules. Of course, many years later, they look back and realize just how good they had it. Then, there are the many broken families where the parents fight all the time or one parent has left. And, that's an unfair strain on the kids. Good luck finding many people who say that they had a "normal" childhood.
Thanks,
Gordon
BTW, I wish you would write more often...

[Susan Buckley]

All that HAIR you had in those days, Danny!

xoxxoxo

[[email protected]]

Once again... separated at birth! We might have been in the audience the same day. Still one of my favorite and most intense theatrical experiences. Thanks for reminding me. xo