Alum Gives Stage, Voice to Homeless

Although homeless people might seem like unlikely actors, Yoho Myrvaagnes ’01 saw acting as a way to help them express their concerns and frustrations. With pluck and patience, he has brought theater to people whose daily lives are usually concerned with finding food and warmth.

In May 2001, just before graduating from Harvard, Myrvaagnes attended a speech by acclaimed director Peter M. Sellars ’80. Myrvaagnes says Sellars described the arts as “the language with which to speak of the unspeakable,” a way to forge “common ground” among diverse individuals. Sellars urged students to take arts to both the streets and corporate boardrooms as they left Harvard.

Sellars’ words resonated deeply with Myrvaagnes.

“He talked about doing theater in ways I’d never thought about before, doing King Lear with friends in regular clothing to mark the beginning of the Reagan Administration, with Brother Blue as King Lear,” Myrvaagnes says.

Sellars’ speech—at Harvard’s annual Arts First celebration—inspired Myrvaagnes, an English concentrator, to embark on a mission to bring the arts to the streets.

Fresh out of college, Myrvaagnes set out to create “The Out-Cast Project,” a dramatic troupe of homeless individuals who would learn and employ theater techniques to communicate their stories, he says.

The Out-Cast Project was based both on Sellars’ philosophy of art as an instrument of democracy, and the work of the Los Angeles Poverty Department, a theater that featured monologues by homeless people.

In the mission statement for the Project, Myrvaagnes wrote, “Our mission is to show the human experience of homelessness through theater to a range of audiences, and to compel the public to see that homeless people are human.”

Growing Curiosity

Myrvaagnes’s extracurricular activities at Harvard include helping to found the Quincy House Theater Group and volunteering in soup kitchens. These activities laid the groundwork for a life that would combine a love for drama and his concern for the homeless.

He says he had his first “aha” moment while volunteering at the Harvard Square Homeless Shelter.

Hearing the story of a man who worked two jobs but could not afford to pay rent, Myrvaagnes says he became convinced that homeless people needed a new forum to express themselves.

“People facing homelessness need a safe space in which they can practice skillfully governing their bodies and voices and eyes without the present threat of a loss of wealth or well-being,” Myrvaagnes writes in the online mission statement for the Out-Cast Project.

He says he hoped that a theater of the homeless would empower performers and forge a connection between the homeless individuals and their audiences.

“Theater compels an audience to look at homeless people, something people in all cities spend their time avoiding,” the mission statement says.

With his parents’ financial support and encouragement, Myrvaagnes set out to realize his vision.

Myrvaagnes toured Boston-area homeless shelters, speaking with directors and guests, putting up flyers and making announcements at meals. He scheduled informal meetings, introducing his ideas and teaching basic theater games to willing participants at the shelters.

Setting Up Shop

Michael Sullivan, director of Bread and Jams, a Cambridge-based agency that provides services to the city’s homeless population, was particularly receptive to Myrvaagnes and urged homeless individuals to give the theater program a try.

So Myrvaagnes began holding regular informal meetings at Bread and Jams, often gathering people together in the parking lot.

He says he taught participants theater games “to give people a taste of what was not rational” in their daily routines.

He also wrote scripts that the actors could perform for each other.

One day, while Myrvaagnes was introducing theater exercises, a man interrupted to talk about a frustrating experience earlier that day at a social services agency. He said he had been unable to pick up his social security check because he had been listed as deceased.

Myrvaagnes says he was struck by the pain and passion in the man’s tale and with the other participants at Bread and Jams. Myrvaagnes scripted a one-act play about the man’s experience. They rehearsed and scheduled a performance for Oct. 2001 outside the Holyoke Center to coincide with the opening of a new art installation there.

But on the day of the performanc, with an audience of over 40 people assembled, the man on whose story the play was based disappeared. Myrvaagnes had to step in and play the lead role.

The show went on, but the man’s disappearance was a blow for the cast and for Myrvaagnes.

From Scripts to Stage

But Myrvaagnes persisted with his project, setting up meetings and rehearsals at The Actors Workshop on Boylston Street, across from a shelter.

He says he stopped writing scripts because he thought the homeless people he was working with should speak in their own words.

“I felt initially that if I wrote a script for someone that it would be helping them,” he says. “I guess I would say in retrospect I should have known better, but I learned.”

The number of participants attending his workshops fluctuated. He would begin with a dozen, but the numbers repeatedly dwindled, often leaving only one performer.

But the actors and Myrvaagnes did succeed in putting together, rehearsing and performing monologues.

Myrvaagnes says he recalls one woman’s story about a community of homeless people living on federal land near MIT. She spoke of the community as family and the land as home.

He also praises one short play his performers improvised called The Happy Homeless Shelter.

“It was a brilliant satire,” Myrvaagnes says. “‘The Happy Shelter’ served caviar and everyone wore tuxedos. It became a description of what shelter life is really like through opposites and grotesque contrasts.”

Another scene, titled “The Bench,” was performed by a mother and daughter who had been homeless several years before. The two characters sat on a bench, debating whether political protest was useful.

“It was like Beckett. It was beautiful,” says Myrvaagnes, who played a passerby in the scene.

The three actors performed “The Bench” in Boston Common and at a Masschusetts insurance agency.

Growing Pains

But by fall 2002, Myrvaagnes says he realized the Out-Cast Project needed more than he was able to give.

His grant requests were denied, and the Actors Workshop was bulldozed and replaced by luxury condominiums.

Above all, Myrvaagnes says he did not have the experience or leadership to make the project a success.

“I expected to be a facilitator. I thought that once people had the idea and the space they would do it,” he says.

Myrvaagnes says he still believes “in the power of theater as a method to exorcise or counter difficult issues,” but he calls his experience “humbling and sobering.”

Yet, despite his regrets and the difficulties he encountered, Myrvaagnes says he has not given up.

He recently visited the Los Angeles-based theater that inspired the Out-Cast Project.

He says he hopes to continue working with the homeless and is looking at jobs as a case-manager for homeless individuals. He has a long-term ambition to pursue drama therapy. And this past fall, he was able to work with his hero—the man who started it all—as a researcher in Peter Sellars’ production of The Children of Herakles at the American Reparatory Theater.