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Issues, answers, controversy

Students in the Source Teen Theater hope to change, or even save, lives with their message on sex. They're learning a few lessons, too.

By AMBER MOBLEY
Published March 3, 2006

NORTH TAMPA - "I am sooooooo hyper!!!!"

She wears baby blue eye shadow, low-rise pants and a camouflaged shirt with "You Can't See Me" written on it in glitter.

Flopping down on a timeworn couch, Madison Bickel of Seminole Heights breaks into a production of sorts about energy drinks - which ones work and which ones don't.

Hands flailing in the air, Madison hardly takes a fraction of a second's breath between sentences. Clearly, the 15-year-old drank the ones that work.

Her three friends - inadvertently morphing into an audience - sit smirking. Talk of Japanese anime, homework and house parties comes soon after.

Then, more teens stream in to Source Teen Theater, a small suite on W Busch Boulevard.

Baggy jeans, spiky belts, neon pink and purple hair, flip-flops and flowing skirts gather in a circle on the floor.

The next two hours would reveal the not-so-bright issues and worries hidden by the smiles and laughter.

Loneliness, acceptance and fear surface in conversation.

Source tries to be a safe place for those concerns as well as a place to learn and teach.

Through educational sessions, meetings and theatrical performances, the teens support each other and try to help their peers with life choices regarding sex, family issues and peer pressure.

A lot of times, says member Sam Belyea, those issues are "taboo."

"At Source you feel okay talking about them and asking questions," says Sam, 15, of South Tampa.

Not everybody is pleased with the message that Source teens receive and disseminate. Nor does everybody approve of the sponsor: Planned Parenthood, an organization that supports abortion rights.

Calling Planned Parenthood "pro-death," Hillsborough County Commissioner Ronda Storms succeeded in canceling county funding for Source late last year.

The teens, however, see themselves as protecting lives.

Hillsborough's teen pregnancy rate is 15 percent higher than the state average, according to the county Healthy Start Coalition. And Hillsborough has the third-highest AIDS rate of Florida's 67 counties, according to the Florida Division of Disease Control.

Source teens want to change that, using education as the catalyst.

Talking about the issues "doesn't mean we're promoting sexual promiscuity, encouraging abortions and all that stuff," says member Caitlin Wind, 15, of Seminole Heights.

The biggest part of Source, said program director Bonnie Amson, is education.

Whether teens act in plays or teach classes about "safer sex" - the only safe sex is no sex, Amson contends - they have to know what they're talking about.

"Their job is to teach everyone they can," says Amson, "to become experts. Sexperts."

"I always tell them, "If you do this right, you could save a life.' "

After the 20 or so Source members settle in a circle on this Wednesday evening at the Source office, Amson asks, "Did anyone have any teachable moments?"

Some sure did. Condoms were the only form of birth control mentioned by a nurse at a camp some members attended during winter break.

So Source teens at the camp crafted a list of other options she could add to her presentation.

One teen's father claimed using two condoms was better than one.

She had to correct him.

Jaime Murray, 16, of Town 'N Country, mediated an impromptu conversation about condoms with classmates on the school bus.

"If they say something silly like, "You just strap it on and go,' I'll say "No. It's a little more complicated than that,' " Jamie says.

She even carries condoms in her wallet in case she needs to give a demonstration. "I've been stopped in class from going too far into detail," says the Blake High School sophomore. "When I'm at school and kids have questions and teachers refuse to answer them, at least I can give a straight answer."

Amson, a den mother of sorts, stocks a cooler with Cuban sandwiches, juices and water and sets off to Blake High.

Once she's there, Source performers, four of them, pack into the program's big beige van, a hand-me-down from Sarasota's Source program, which started 20 years ago.

Today's destination: East County Alternative School in Plant City.

In a brisk walk, June Robinson, the school's student intervention specialist, directs the cast to the performance area, a classroom trailer.

She's excited.

"See, this is about intervention," Robinson says. "I'm trying to teach my kids about sex, about drugs, about violence. Anything that can help."

The 90-minute play has a little bit of it all.

Freshman Year depicts three young girls' journeys through their first year in high school, where alcohol use and unprotected sex end in pregnancy, sexually transmitted infections - or STIs - and depression.

The sound of a crying baby begins the play and out walks Natalya Bastille, 15, in character as Amelia, a teenage mother.

"I was so stupid," she says. "I didn't know anything about boys, love, sex, anything."

Although the play is fictional, students in the audience called it "really real."

When the characters find themselves at a health clinic - one for a pregnancy test, the other being treated for an STI - hushed cries of "Dang" and "Aw, man" arise from students in the audience, and from teachers too.

After the play, performers ask audience members what they thought about the characters' actions, motivations and how they could have prevented the outcomes.

"If you go home tonight and think about any of this," Amson tells the audience, "we did a good job."

"I'm thinkin' 'bout it right now!" one student shouted.

Not all Source members act. But those who do say plays are "emotional" and "life-changing" for the audience and for themselves.

And that, says Source creator KT Curran, was the idea behind its founding.

"I wanted it to be a creative and positive venue for young people to both learn and to, themselves, teach their peers about information related to healthy decision-making using theater as the vehicle," said Curran, an actor by trade.

Unlike the Sarasota program that has found support from its county commissioners, Tampa Source must now rely on grants and donations to survive.

Hillsborough commissioners killed county funding for Source for the next two years - a cut of nearly $40,000 - at the end of last summer.

A stream of Source teens, their parents, a sex therapist, various educators and the chair of Planned Parenthood of Southwest and Central Florida testified at public hearings, but "it seemed as if they already had their minds made up about it," said Source member Caitlin, "like they weren't even listening to us."

Members invited the commissioners to see their plays and visit the theater, but they never came.

Quoted in a September St. Petersburg Times article, Storms, who would not comment for this article, said the School Board could find others to address topics covered by Source.

Terry Kemple, the former executive director for Florida Right to Life and a founding member of the Brandon-based Community Issues Council, favors abstinence-only sex education.

As much as Source leaders say they advocate abstinence, Kemple and others contend the program promotes promiscuity and even homosexuality.

"It's wrong for any of our money to be used for that. "(The commission's decision) was a vote to protect our young people from those who would really take advantage of the fact that (they're) going through a time of sexual questioning," he said.

Since the vote, Curran said, "we're actively looking for funding down every avenue." And Planned Parenthood plans to reapply for county funding next year.

"Once we start a program, we like to stick with that program and continue supporting it," Curran said. For now, grants and sympathetic donors help cover rent, gas, insurance and all those Cuban sandwiches. Sometimes, Source teens become donors, making wisecracks about their county government as they throw spare change into a collection jar.

On a more serious note, member Victoria Woodard wonders whether the group could save more lives under a more supportive government. "It's like they're trying to keep us from doing things we do best," she says, "which is informing."

- Amber Mobley can be reached at 813 269-5311 or amobley@sptimes.com

[Last modified March 2, 2006, 13:56:08]