AURORA | They started with silly questions about cartoon characters and unicorns.
The eight girls sitting in the classroom at the Excelsior Youth Center last week were all teenagers, and signs of their age showed during this improv game. Girls shouted out questions for one student who then went on to translate the gibberish of another posing as a foreign expert.
‘Is Hello Kitty a devil cat?’ one student asked. ‘Do unicorns poo glitter?’ demanded another.
When the subject turned to everyday life at their own school, the students no longer seemed so young or carefree. One girl asked about the reasoning behind forcible restraint and a got a straightforward set of answers: “To keep us from hurting ourselves.” “Because it can help kids.”
For the past 40 years, those goals have been at the heart of this residential treatment center for adolescent girls in Aurora. And for the past four years, the same aims have driven the Denver Center Theatre Company’s visiting actor’s workshop. Every week, a teaching artist from the Denver Center hosts a class at Excelsior that includes simple acting games and improv exercises.
For these girls, the workshop is an important outlet.
“It’s a space where they’re not judged, where they’re just encouraged to speak. They’re able to just share their day with their peers and their teachers,” said Jessica Austgen, a teacher with the Denver Center who’s led the program at Excelsior for the past three years. “Actor’s workshop is a place where they just get to speak and have fun.”
That’s critical for these girls, many of whom have faced a wide range of emotional, mental and physical issues. Excelsior is the largest center of its kind in Colorado. About 150 girls ages 11 to 18 live and go to high school classes on the 33-acre campus off Chambers Road. The girls come through recommendations of human services departments, school districts or courts.
“Every girl here has had a very difficult journey. They’ve failed every other place they’ve been,” said Kathy Gravely, Excelsior’s director of development. “They’re truants, they’re out-of-control teens.”
The actor’s workshop program is just one of many approaches to therapy at Excelsior. Along with a resident staff of psychologists, the center offers nontraditional treatments like horse riding and therapy with dogs. The partnership with the Denver Center, however, is one of the more creative outlets for these girls. It’s a voluntary program, and the girls have to earn their spot in the class. Good behavior in their regular high school courses is a prerequisite.
“There are no wrong answers here. You can say anything you want,” Austgen said, adding that there are rules against mentioning taboo subjects like drugs, boys and drinking in class. “Just the fact that the girls are speaking is a success. All you need to do is participate and suddenly you have succeeded.”
The eight girls in the actor’s workshop class held last week had no problems participating. They lined up to have a turn in the gibberish game. They cracked themselves up during exercises that forced them to take on different accents and imitate the mannerisms of their partners. They giggled and laughed during “Sneaky Statues,” a physical game that saw them sneaking behind Austgen in an attempt not to be seen.
It all seemed lighthearted on the surface. But for Danielle, an Excelsior student who’d missed past classes because of behavior problems, the workshop was much more important than simple fun and games.
“I missed it. It’s really open, even more open than the cottage I’m at,” said Danielle, who’s struggled with issues like cutting herself. “A lot of these girls are in my cottage. It’s really fun to see a side of them you don’t normally get to see.”
Smiles and laughs don’t always come easily to these students, and the actor’s workshop brings them out, Danielle added. The girls in this class can be teenagers again. They can make jokes about pooping unicorns and run around pretending to be jellyfish. The benefits of that kind of release can be easy to underestimate, even for a professional actor like Austgen. She remembered sitting in a circle with a group of girls after a class and getting feedback about the day’s exercises.
“This one girl was like, ‘I smiled today.’ The fact that our class gave the girl her only smile she had all day, that means we accomplished something,” Austgen said. “That’s the cornerstone of my experience here.”
Reach reporter Adam Goldstein at 720-449-9707 or agoldstein@aurorasentinel.com