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“Grappling with his Brothers’ Brutal Crime, A Teen Finds Expression in Theater”
From The Boston Globe on December 2, 2004 |
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ALL CHILDREN’S THEATRE |
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Celebrating 20 Years of Changing Children’s Lives |
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News |
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By Joseph P. Kahn, Globe Staff
When the lights come on again, the woman is on the floor. One of her assailants crouches beside her and plunges the knife into her neck. The pleasure he takes in the act is overtly sexual.
"One 1,000, two 1,000," he counts slowly, drawing the blade in and out. "Three 1,000, four.."
The youths flee the crime scene and hide in a basement. The older boy is 16. The younger one, the counter, is 13. As the play jump-cuts between scenes, the boys, who are brothers, face up to what they've done. They talk tough, but they're scared the way kids are when they've misbehaved. Surrendering to the police, the brothers are eventually prosecuted as adults miraculously, the victim survives to testify against them and receive lengthy prison sentences.
The one-act drama is barely 15 minutes long, and its most moving soliloquy belongs to Johnny, the boys' 7-year-old brother. Recalling how he tried to hug his brother Joshua while the cops led him away, Johnny says, "That was when my heart felt like it was going to explode. I loved you, Josh. I wasn't going to leave you."
In any venue, "The Rivera Brothers" would be daunting to stage and disturbing to watch. When the play's cast is made up entirely of teenagers, as happened with two performances a few weeks ago by All Children's Theatre in Pawtucket, the emotional stakes are higher. Yet it is the back story to the production that explains why audience members were in tears afterward, and why the playwright's mother sat through one performance with conflicting emotions.
Written and directed by Jonathan Olivera, a sophomore at the Beacon Charter School in Woonsocket, "The Rivera Brothers" is a tough-minded meditation on youth violence, family ties, and victimhood. But it is also a cri de coeur, a deeply personal reaction to a crime with more than one victim.
A week after the final performance, Olivera, now 17, sits down to talk about the play. For years, he says, he struggled to understand what his brothers had done and what it had cost them and their family. Olivera continues to visit them in prison regularly and remains perhaps their closest link to the outside world. As a reminder of that relationship, Olivera carries a letter from his brothers in his pocket wherever he goes.
"A lot of people have suffered from that one crime. I suffer, my mother suffers," Olivera says during the interview at the ACT offices in Pawtucket. "My family lives with this every day."
He constantly thinks about what happened that night, in all its stark brutality. "And that's a good thing," Olivera adds, having held onto what felt like a secret for so long. Without the help of people such as ACT associate artistic director Joanne Fayan, Olivera says, he might never have succeeded in turning his pain into words, and words into art.
"I'm hardheaded at times," acknowledges Olivera, who is slightly built and wears glasses and stud earrings. "I was afraid of being judged, or offending my family. Joanne was happy that I'd started writing anything. From there it started developing pretty quickly, though."
Fayan sits next to Olivera during the interview. At one point, she carefully notes that the play one in a series of ACT productions containing mature subject matter and language was meant in no way to exonerate the two brothers or cast their actions in a sympathetic light. "As a woman and mother of daughters, I was horrified by what they did and thought first of the female victim," Fayan says. "But this play was always about Johnny and his experience. He's another victim in this."
Calling herself "very protective" of ACT's commitment to allowing teens to explore adult themes, Fayan says the few rules governing shows in the series include no sex, nudity, or smoking onstage. For this reason, among others, Olivera chose not to reenact the sexual assaults on the woman that preceded her stabbing.
"I wanted the audience to feel uncomfortable," he says, "but not so uncomfortable they didn't want to be there."
Asked what message he hopes audiences took away, Olivera ponders the question for a moment.
"I want teens to know that violence can result in something bigger than they thought," he replies. "That even though you're only 14 or 15 or 16, if you're drugged or drunk or mad enough you're capable of doing something like this."
His brothers, Olivera continues, "want to send that message through me" as well.
Indeed, if that message could have somehow gotten lost in translation, a letter to the audience and cast members from Olivera's brothers made the warning explicit. "Please keep an open mind because our message is one of love and hope," the brothers wrote. "It is to give our young people the knowledge and tools they need to see a bad situation coming and to know how to respond to it."
The letter continued: "We have lost our childhood, the best years of anyone's life. Over the years we have seen many people come [into prison] without the expectation of ever leaving. They are starting their lives as it is ending. We see that as a shame." In conclusion, they thanked Olivera for turning their story into "a learning tool for others."
Some learning tool. Grim memories Luis and Joshua Rivera were no strangers to the criminal justice system when they broke into a 33-year-old woman's Wallace Street apartment in Providence on Feb. 7, 1993. Both had juvenile rap sheets and were "street smart," according to Olivera, their half-brother. (Olivera shares a mother with them but has a different biological father.
According to news reports, the Rivera brothers raped their victim before stabbing her in the breasts, wrists, knees, and neck. They took jewelry and money with them, too. Convinced by their mother to turn themselves in, the brothers were held at the Rhode Island Training School, a facility for juvenile offenders, until their 1994 arraignment on charges including rape and assault with intent to murder. Joshua Rivera became the youngest defendant in state history to be tried as an adult. Both brothers pleaded guilty and were sentenced to 33 years in prison; they are eligible for parole next year.
Olivera retains scattered memories of what happened back then. He remembers the family phone being bugged and two detectives coming to their apartment after church one day, looking for Luis and Joshua. He remembers being driven in the family car, his cousin beside him in the backseat, to where his brothers were hiding out, and watching them being led away in handcuffs.
"I was freaking out," recalls Olivera. "Why were there so many cops around, I wondered."
It took another seven years to learn the grim details of what his brothers had done. Olivera went on the Internet and read news accounts. Afterward, he says, he would visit Luis and Joshua in prison and stare at their hands, trying to imagine how they could have done such things. At school, says Olivera, he kept the family secret to himself though it wasn't really much of a secret.
"I had a hard time focusing," he acknowledges. "And what I couldn't act out at home, I did at school."
At the Veazie Street School in Providence, Olivera was assigned to Julie La Tessa's fourth-grade class. Believing in art and theater as a way to help disadvantaged youths express themselves, La Tessa steered Olivera toward children's theater in nearby Pawtucket. Since joining ACT, he's been involved in more than 20 productions as a playwright, actor, musician, and stagehand.
When she first met Olivera, says La Tessa, he tried hard to be the class clown. "Few of the other kids knew about the crime, which did a lot to Jonathan emotionally," she says. But in part through working with the theater group, Olivera "developed into a responsible, accountable young man," she adds admiringly. After one performance of his play last month, Olivera acknowledged La Tessa's support by having her stand and accept the audience's applause.
If theater has offered one outlet for emotional turmoil, however, Olivera has also poured himself into a less obvious one. For the past two years, he has wrestled semiprofessionally as Johnny Trendy, an androgynous Puerto Rican character whom audiences love to boo. The bouts, mostly local and low-paying, are sponsored by organizations such as Power League Wrestling, a Rhode Island-based nonprofit league that stages charity events. Much as he loves it, wrestling is not the first thing Olivera likes to talk about.
"I wear eye makeup and a skirt over my tights," Olivera says with a sheepish smile. "It's part of the show."
At 133 pounds, he's also gotten banged up by heavier and older wrestlers. Why do it? "Adding theater to violence," he says, "is one way to get out my anger, I guess."
Wrestling aside, the past couple of years have been tough, Olivera acknowledges. Last year he dropped out of school for what he calls "personal reasons," declining to elaborate. People he cares about, including one family member lost to violence, have disappeared from his life. Olivera works after school as a mortgage company telemarketer. His father, a retired factory worker, and mother, who's on disability, remain profoundly affected by what his brothers did.
For all the pain, Olivera says, there are hopeful signs, too.
His brothers have earned their GEDs in prison and are already thinking about life outside. One wants to be a carpenter, one a motivational speaker counseling others on the pitfalls of youth violence. When he visits them, Olivera says, they play cards and arm wrestle and talk about an uncertain future.
"They'd like to ride a bike someday, or walk a dog in the park," says Olivera.
Meanwhile, he's gotten an added measure of closure from mothers who attended his play last month. At a Q&A session after the performances, Olivera asked: Would you turn your children in under similar circumstances? How far would you go to protect them, even when they've done something terribly wrong?
One mother who neglected to stay for the discussion was his own, says Olivera. But when he got home that night, she met her youngest son with tears in her eyes.
"Thank you," she told him.
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