This week on the Editors urban gangs in Pittsburgh.

How much should we fear them?

Carnegie Mellon University is having great success with its attention in the summer to plays never seen before.

And columnis Barbara Cloud has the last word on summer theater.

Urban gangs have become obvious in the Pittsburgh area in recent years.

How much do we know about them?

How much should we fear them?

Jackie Blakey, a school social worker, is the guest of editor John Craig.

Assistant managing editor Mark Roth and metropolitan editor Edwina Kaikai.

Well, ladies and gentlemen, the question before the house seems to be, did we really contribute anything positive and understanding this week with this series of articles about gangs, or are we just causing more trouble?

Well, I think that I think generally it was positive although that obviously depends on the perspective of the reader.

But I would I was thinking, before this show that there were two general prejudices that I thin we might have helped to dispel if people came into this with open minds.

One was the prejudice or the bias of denial that we don't have a gang proble and that it's not as bad here.

And I think we we showed that that wasn't the case.

But on the other end of the spectrum, there are those people living in the region who think that gangs are everywhere, and that if they walk outside their doors, no matter where they live, that they're in great danger and that they themselves will be targets.

And I think we also showed that the saddest thing about this is that mostly the people whom gang members injure and kill each other, an they're killing each other off and and cutting off the hop and the future of of themselves.

Jackie, you you work at least professionally in this area.

What do you think about this?

I mean, you're aware of what's been, printed and what's what.

What information, if any, do you think is the most importan for people to understand that?

Although it is a problem that is in our city and our suburban areas and also throughout the United States, that I don't think everyone is in danger.

I think basically gang members are out to get each other.

But, in the last two weeks, my understanding is that there is a very very serious truth in the city.

They've been having meetings nightly in these tales, getting into some, volleyball games.

Basketball games.

Some have happened in Homewood, so we haven't had a if you'll note is may drive by shootings and as much violence.

So I think that the kids are trying to work for peace that the media needs to and I thought that these articles were very much positive, portray a more positive image, because it was very interesting that the article Sunday talked about how the some of the gang members would do some things and then go back and, and watch themselves on the news.

And this kind of in the beginning, I think, fell int some of the negative behaviors.

And the, they're trying to do some positive things.

My sense what I liked about the series the most I guess, was getting the feeling that there's hope that this is not a hopeless situation, that people need to just throw up their hands and stay in their homes and stay on the floor because they're afraid of bullets going to come through their window, but that there is hope in that.

People, not just the law enforcement official or people working in that area, but folks i the community are taking steps to help themselves and help their young people living.

The African proverb that i takes a village to raise a town.

Let me ask you a question.

Is this in this regard rather roughly a million, 400,000 men, 300,000 people who live in Allegheny County?

Of that number of people total.

How many people are in gangs?

I mean, what's what?

What's the number of people we're really talking about?

We give a great deal of attention.

And I was looking at this thing and maybe, I suppose I should have asked the question before the before the fact.

But are we talking about 100 people?

Are we talking about 400 people?

What are we talking about?

I can tell you what the official number is and the official number by the police who try and track this, is that there might be 2500 gang members in the city, and that there might be some unknown number outside city boundaries, maybe an equal number when you take all the groups together.

But I tell you frankly that I think it's very hard for them to know for sure.

Because one thing about youth gangs, street gangs is they're fluid.

Kids move in and out.

Some kids are not as full fledged in their involvement as other kids.

Some kids are in jail and it just is very hard to pin down a number.

Well, but I mean, that goes that was really behind my question too, because what it seems to me to be true, this is not something that they did sort of, on here it is and there it isn't.

But this is a continuum that you have the number of these kids, they the for whatever reason, whether they feel for protection or some other reason to think this is something I should be associated with.

And it's in there and there is there's degrees of activity from none to total.

Is that right?

Well, yes.

But also if if you say they think that they should be associated with many or not, but in order to survive in neighborhoods and to be protected or just to be accepted, they may appear to be gang members.

Their gear, as they call it, or clothing, may indicate that they aren't, and actually they're not.

And what was interesting is, i and as I stated in the article in the Post-Gazette, when you talk to a lot of of young people, you may think that they're in gangs, but when they're around their parents or adults that have a lot of influenc on them, it kind of changes up.

And the girls state, well, I'm not really a gang member, but I'm down for my hood, and a lot of young men will say the same things, and down with my hood means that if anything would happen in my neighborhood, that I would of course support the guys or the young people in my neighborhood.

But I'm not going to go out to start trouble.

And yes, there are varying degrees.

Just just the idea of gang itself makes me wonder, actually, what is gang?

That's what I was trying to get at.

What is a gang?

Jackie, do you talk to and what do y'all think?

Well, I think the way I would try and define it in terms of what we were trying to write about is, you know, there are some people, for instance, who say, well, you know, if white kids are in a grou together, they're just a team.

And if you see some black kid together, they're called a gang.

I think we were trying to dispel the notion that any group of black teenagers who dress a certain way and hang out together are a gang.

So we were trying to define more precisely what it is that differentiates a gang from other.

Well, I think there i involvement with crack cocaine in the serious gangs or some kind of drug.

Dealing seems to be a common thing.

There's involvement with weapons.

And to me, all of this talk about gang that are forming in the suburbs has to be leavene with the fact that we don't have a lot of evidence that a lot of weapons have made it out to a lot of the suburbs.

All right.

But then let me just press show that you're saying to me that there are 2500, kids in Pittsburgh doing crack cocaine and with weapons.

I don't believe that.

No, I'm saying that there may be 2500 kids who will say I am affiliated with a gang, and I'm not.

Well, how many people would be if a gang of people who have weapons and dealing in crack cocaine?

I mean, I my question was 100.

400.

What's the number?

I don't know and I was going to ask Jackie, how many would you guess actually have been involved in violence or likel to even have access to weapons?

Would you have any rough idea.

I'm not a good numbers person, so.

No, I really couldn't tell you that, bu but I would venture to say that.

See, I don't agree with your basic definition of gangs.

I believe that a gang is any group of people because there are gang members that do many, many positive things and that are all for peace.

And I would not se and I think the problem is that we've given gangs such a negative connotation that, for an example, I belong to an organization, and a lot of times the girls or guys will say to me, well, you have colors.

I'm sure you have signs.

Yes we do.

And I say, but this is a good girls gangs or this is a positive gang.

And I basically do not try to encourage kids to come out of gangs.

I encourage the to stop the negative behaviors.

And most of the kids are really not part of those negative behaviors.

It's a very few, and we just recently returned from a trip to Somerset with some young people that were or were not claiming gangs, but there was, some suggested activities involved, and their discussion centered around, whether it was positive attention that the guys got or negative attention, and they weren't always in support of the negative attention and the girls even got into who was the best person to date in terms of, what it could do for them.

So, because I disagre with your definition of gangs, I couldn't really give you a number.

But I would say this I did have this strong impression.

I, I think that all of us can understand that in any social group, if there is a person who's negative or who's, the bully or who's the disruptor, that person can have undue influenc on the whole rest of the group.

So I think that the numbers of people who are the really bad actors in street gangs may be, may not be no more than 10% of the total but they have undue influence, you know, because because they're the ones who are they're crooks.

Well, that's right, I mean, I mean, isn't that true?

Yes.

And and I think that I think the other thing we found was that those who are most likel to have the the biggest problems in terms of the way they behave, also have the it just makes sense.

They have the biggest problems in their own background.

They have the biggest problems with parenting, with poverty, with not having a place to live, with not having any sense of moral values.

Let me ask you a different question.

I mean, we have you're a Pittsburgh or are you Pittsburgh?

Yes.

All right.

Do you think that things have changed in Pittsburgh in this regard, in terms of neighborhood identification, things from from, say, when you were growing up?

Only the violence en of it, because there were gangs.

I mean, we were there were seven of us that hung out together and we were definitely considered a gang.

And when we walked down the street, people said, oh, there they come.

And if you went to the North Side, you what?

You clearly stood out becaus we were not from the north side.

So I think in my mind and I think the series show too, that it's just peer pressure and kids hanging out together as they always had.

There's just that added dimension of a little bit of violence.

Let me ask you another part of why not just violence?

But is it also true that you did not have, either uniforms, colors or signs?

Isn' that something that's come from from from the national media?

There weren't colors per se, but people generally dress the like.

You knew the spell you you in your neighborhood, you dressed a certain way in your school, you dressed a certain way.

It wasn't necessarily the same color, but, if there was this one group I mean, this was back in the 60s where it was just, I mean, in the early 70s, we began to wear pants in school.

And so you would go to schoo with your jeans on, your slacks on, and have a long shirt and then a shorter shirt on top of it.

I mean, that's but nobody made any big fuss about this.

No.

They just said you look bad, but what did they.

Well, see, I was in Wilkinsburg and and part of Wilkinsburg was just up on the top of that hill.

And I was in the other part of Wilkinsburg, where there were not a lot of African-Americans.

As a matter of fact, we were the only family.

And then there were those kids that were on the border of Homewood.

So it was different.

And people know your neighborhood.

And, I think there was still some degree of violence when guys would go into another neighborhood.

And I always think it's because of the other neighborhood thinks they want to come i for their girls or their women.

But it was maybe just a fist fight and that was it.

But I think violence all over the country, what our kids have been exposed to has escalated to the fact that this is an accepted way of life for these kids.

They they have they've been raised on this.

There is no difference.

Do you think also that what they see either in motion pictures that is fiction not fact, but motion pictures or on television contributes in any way to this?

Most definitely.

Motion pictures, videos, anything that they see, even down to cartoons and why is that?

I mean, what what is it there?

Because one of the things that the series seemed to suggest was there was a bit of that like, and, and that some of these, some of this national, phenomeno describing the boys in the hood, this sort of thing is something it sort of picked u and become part of the culture.

Is that true?

I think one thing is that if you have, it all depends on the viewer.

If you have somebody who's watching something or reading something, they pick out of it what they want to see.

You know, Joh Singleton and Boyz in the hood did his utmost to show the negative side of gang lif and the tragedy that it caused.

And yet certain gang members, I'm sure, watched that.

And all they focused on was the thrill of the control and the violence and the colors and the group group identification.

And there will be people who would probably look at things in our series, but if you have young people and there really isn't a lot of restriction on what is seen on TV, I can remember sitting with a group of people, young people that watched the Godfather for the first time, and because this is something that seemed to be a thrill, they enjoyed it.

And if you talk to young people, they will tell you when they commit these violent acts.

It's fun.

That came out rather clearly in the case of these guys that were locked up.

I mean, they they said fact is that was one of the biggest part of it not just watch themselves on TV after the after they go hold up a device or then go back and watch themselves on TV.

But they said, this is a lot of fun and you cannot escape this thing.

And I think it should be obvious to everyone.

But for some people, I think it still isn't.

Guns is the watershed.

I mean, gangs that were around this city in the 50s, there were fistfights, there were confrontations.

There might have even been knives and bats.

There's just no way that the damage that they can cause can even approximate what happened with guns.

Guys, you all agree about this?

That's another level.

Completely.

What do you do about guns, in your opinion?

Anything.

There's so many of them around.

You really can't do anything about it.

I couldn't answer that question.

I just, cannot believe the acces that young people have to guns.

I don't think most of the time they're loaded.

I really don't but you can't take that chance.

I, I have no answer.

Okay.

You have, Edwina Do you have an answer?

I think the guns are just a symptom of the problem.

I mean, the guns you need to get.

We need to get these young peopl looking in other directions for, solving conflicts and for just getting involved in other things in the community.

I don't think if you take al the guns off of the street that, I don't think you'll be able to take all the guns off.

So you think that all of you agree that the gun situation is really not the way you're going to solve this problem?

They're just there.

They have to find ou why they're in conflict, though, because there is no rhyme or reason to a lot of this.

I'm just saying that that I wish I had a really good solution to at least cut down on the number of guns on the street, because the big difference that's made to me compared with the old conflicts is that now you can have a skinny little kid who's 15 and that gun is an equalizer.

Before, when you had conflicts, usually the strongest kid would certainly win.

Now you have a 15 year old kid can find a gun even while taking a lot lower than 15, because I think that's that's a major issue.

And because our younger kid are so much more exposed to it.

I think guns can go away.

Let me ask you a quick final question.

Really, what are you do you feel more optimistic about today, the next 4 o 5 years than you than you did?

Do you think we're starting to get a handle on this?

Most definitely.

You agree about that?

I think the kids are tired of it, and I think they're willing to work with us.

And I think adults are ready to step in and say, maybe we do have, some fault for this and that.

We need to also help and goes back to the village idea.

Jackie, thank you very much Edwina, thank you.

Mark, Thank you very much.

On the Carnegie Mellon campus these days, theater goers are attending plays that virtually nobod has ever seen performed before.

Frank Gagliano, CMUs artistic director for a showcase of new plays, is the guest of Post-Gazette drama critic Chris Rawson.

Well, Frank, you're back.

You know, all the time.

Well, I mean, the showcase of new plays is still alive.

Yes, it is the third year.

Fifth year.

Yeah, well, i depends on how you look at it, but it's eight years actually, the first two years were just Monday nights in the Studio Theater at Carnegie Mellon, doing new plays.

And then we went a bigger the starting the third year.

So counting back then, this will be the eighth year.

It's amazing.

Well, it seems to be more and more important in the, newspaper today is an item about the Senate.

Wanting to cut the NEA funding by 5% or something.

They're particularly angry a some of the controversial plays.

I got a call yesterday from a playwright we did last year having the same play done in a world premiere in West Virginia.

And of course, Senator Byrd is involved with that.

So I got an earful about that in the letter he was writing and everything.

But yeah, it's always under attack.

Well, and this is this is actually then this is the arena in which you guys do your good work helping playwrights get get things going, get started.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

And we develop plays is what we do.

It's a hard concep for people to understand that.

But plays are developed, before they go on to major, major productions.

So our, job is to is to, to help the playwright a give him a certain kind of, aren of work that's sort of protected where the playwright can, work with a professional actors, with a professional director, have his or her own unit working, just focused on his or her play for two weeks.

Well, ten days of rehearsal an then three days of performance.

It's needed now because the whole concept of, previews is pretty much out the window or out of town tryouts.

You know, somewhere playwrights have to work with actors and deal with the text in that, in that situation.

And we, we offer that.

And you're doing it this year for five playwrights, five playwrights, and on we call playwright in residence.

Who will be all those playwrights get two weeks.

As I say, the playwright in residence will be throughout the entire six weeks developing his play in this case.

So he's here.

I'm sorry.

His name is Brian Silberman.

And, is he a harder case that you're giving him?

No, but the play's at a certain level, and, and and needs more time and we're able to work that out.

It's very nice.

And, Jed Harris's directing that.

So he'll have a director and he'll have a cast, as well as the other ones, but they'll work throughout the entire six weeks in the last week, and we'll show the, the result of whatever they've come to.

Yeah.

Well, I wanted to get that right early on, because I know that the ultimate payoff for the audiences, for the American theater in general, is it plays get developed, that there's something in the pipeline that new playwrights that everyone doesn't run off to write for televisio for example.

But no, no, no, no.

But what about the immediate payoff for Pittsburgh audiences?

Holiday involved?

Oh, well, they come in and they see wherever the wherever the process is at that point, they're now invited in.

And I guess that's a good enoug term since the paying $0.99 at the door, you know, it's, but they come in and they see where the piece is at, and, it's there.

And what they give back to the actors, to how they react to what's been developed so far, is important to the playwright who's sitting in the back chewing his nails and, and listening to this, meeting with, audience members after one of our reception, which is open to everyone who comes to the theater, talking and then going back the next day and seeing a new audience.

And they may be the writer the next day may, do some work on the plot.

And in fact, I'm quite sure this weekend that's going to be happening.

Well, I interviewed Howard Solomon, the playwright, for this first week.

I interviewed him the other day, and he he was he was having a lot of troubl working on something very hard.

And and had he gotten it and he said, of course, I may go see it this weekend, and the audience will tell me that I've got it.

And I didn't even know I had it.

Yes, well, that's possible.

Or vice versa.

More likely vice versa or not.

Well, no, I really don't know.

I mean, it it's really it's, It's he's working toward something.

In his case, he, for the piece to pay off, and he's he's worked it all up to a point that it's not quite gelling.

And to find that is very often, you know, sometimes that comes easy and sometimes it doesn't.

The actors are helping him tremendously.

They're professional actors and they they're wonderful.

And the professional director Mila and Kislev, but they all ask questions why, what you know, and the, and the playwright is forced to answer them or not, and then realize that he hasn' the answer to that, and so on.

So it's, that's the process.

Quite amazing.

Well, you're a you're a playwright yourself, and you're also artistic director of this.

Does does it bother yo that then the, the, the product that the audience sees on that weekend is somewhere in the making?

Still?

No, not at all, because the one of the only things I'm interested in is process.

I find the result in my own place.

For example, when I when it gets to the point of of production, I'm usually just out in the backlot, leave and I'm not, I don't I it's very, very difficult and but it's the process that I find really fast.

And I think I've mentioned this before, I really lik sketches as opposed to finished.

I find that so interesting.

The structure of it exposed still, you know, still have audiences that what kind of audiences do you get?

Oh, we have, the one that's one of the great things about the showcase the audience mix, partly due to the price, but we attract such a variety of we get the, the usual, audience goer who likely to go to the Pittsburgh public or the City theater.

We get that.

We also get people who can' afford to go to theater anymore.

Amazing.

But that's quite I don't know if you believe this, but there is some people who find it hard to afford $0.99, but, so they come and we have an audience of people who are coming back to the theater.

We have people who are just so interested in new work that's being developed.

The other thing is the pre-college program is on at CMU.

Which is a program of, for, for high school, kids who, from aroun the country, about 150 of them, who are theater students, and they take a crash conservatory course in the summer.

It's a fabulous there's a lot of fun, but they come and these are young kids, so we get a generational mix.

That's astonishing.

I get this from the actors all the time, but I have come from out of town.

They just don't get audiences like this anymore.

Well, look, we only have about a half a minute left, and I really wanted to ask you, why do you do this?

Oh, well, I think it's very important.

I think the American theater, as usual, it's fabulous.

And it's always in trouble.

And it needs new plays.

Got to have an otherwise it's a museum.

So, we're we're really puttin these plays into the pipeline.

We really are.

These plays go on.

So I think it's very important.

Selfishly, if there's a market.

Maybe one of mine will get out this time.

So this is an invitation.

Pittsburgh ha a real opportunity this month.

Every every weekend through July, every weekend through July, there's a play Friday, Saturday, Sunday matinee.

And there will be one right through the last week and a different one each weekend with the live playwright.

Come and enjoy.

Let's hope they turn out.

Yes, indeed.

Thank you.

Barbara Cloud has the last word o the beauties of summer theater.

I wonder how many of you realize how much talent there is in these hills and valleys surrounding Pittsburgh.

Have you taken time to look at your entertainment pages, to see how fortunate we are to have so many summer stock companies giving us so much pleasure?

At one time in my career, I wrote a theater column called In the Wings.

I'm kind of a frustrated actress myself, having majored in speech and drama, thinking I might seek a career in the theater.

So I loved doing the colum because it introduced me to so many talents and many of them continue year after year after year with little or no glory.

Perhaps not even a review, and probably no pay either.

I doubt there are many cities with so much choice in this area, so if I can do nothing els for my colleagues in the barns and mills and converted churches and college campus theaters, I'd like to at least encourage you to take a drive in just about any direction and enjoy a treat available only in summer.

We don't call them Straw Hat theaters as we did some years ago, although you will still hear that term.

That's because so many groups sprang up in places other than country barns.

Amongst the hayseed in cornstalks and straw.

Still, straw hats denotes summer, and so do these lively theaters.

If you've never been, do it.

They're not the Benedum or Heinz Hall, but that's the point.

It's pure summer, like honeysuckle and outdoor barbecues.

Barbara, than you for that plug for theaters.

And also thank yo for being with us.

Good night.

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