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Disabilities don't keep FREE Players off-stage

BY ROBERT KAHN | robert.kahn@newsday.com

January 29, 2008

Opening night is still six months away, but Michael Brennan is focused on the lyrics to "Fugue for Tinhorns" as if the curtain will rise in a few hours. Flanked by two other young men in a classroom in Old Bethpage, he clutches a Daily Racing Form, a prop he'll use in the opening number of "Guys and Dolls," and begins to sing.

"But look at Epitaph ... he wins it by a half!"

"This is a big thing for me," Brennan, 24, says afterward. The Rockville Centre man, born with Down syndrome, has landed the part of Rusty Charlie, a gambler, in the FREE Players' take on the quintessential Broadway musical. Brennan can function academically and physically at a very high level, but the DS affects his ability to carry a tune, so his delivery in the classroom this afternoon is as much spoken as it is sung.

Along with 90 or so fellow "consumers," as they are referred to in mental health parlance, Brennan will present Frank Loesser's "Guys and Dolls" at the Suffolk Y Jewish Community Center in Commack, beginning June 14. Where a local community theater might launch a production in a matter of weeks, progress among the FREE Players, which operates under the auspices of a not-for-profit agency called Family Residences & Essential Enterprises, is measured in months.

"Our actors might rehearse a scene hundreds of times before they get it right," says James Sisto, artistic director of Theater Day Habilitation at FREE. "By the time we do a show, it needs to be almost second nature for them."

Wide range of clients

FREE is a 30-year-old agency that runs group homes and day treatment centers throughout Nassau and Suffolk for more than 3,000 people. Their clients have disabilities that range from mental retardation, cerebral palsy and Asperger's syndrome to lesser-known conditions such as Prader-Willi Syndrome, a genetic disorder. The group's mission is to foster independence among its clients.

Sisto, 54, a former graphic designer, joined FREE in 1989 as a cook at a group home in Ridge, eventually rising into a series of management jobs. An avid theater fan, he launched the FREE Players in 1993, believing he could help people with disabilities gain control over their symptoms through performance.

Since the program's inception, Sisto has shepherded to the stage semiannual musicals, including productions of "Grease," "Tommy," "Little Shop of Horrors, "Into the Woods" and - twice - "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat."

Initially, Sisto says, it was easy to get sympathy for his cause, but more difficult to get an audience at venues such as Theatre Three in Port Jefferson and the Pilgrim Rehab Center in West Brentwood, where earlier productions were staged. "Generally," Sisto usually tells visitors, "this is not a population that makes people feel good."

"It's like the telethon with Jerry Lewis," Sisto continues. "People think, 'They're gonna be dragging themselves across the stage, so we'll just throw money and leave.' But now we have this group that's amazing to watch and really does make you feel good. And it really changes the whole idea so you're thinking 'differently abled' instead of 'disabled.'"

Recent productions have filled the Suffolk Y's 640 seats. "Guys and Dolls" will run for six performances over two weeks.

Members of the FREE Players enroll in a hodgepodge of classes geared to increasing team skills, bettering one's ability to efficiently manage requests from others and increasing the ability to stay focused on long-term tasks - all skills necessary to stage a musical.

During the first "Joseph," in 1994, Sisto recalls one consumer who had schizophrenia and hallucinated in such a way that he could not communicate with others or hear them speaking to him. But the actor was able to hear his cue and snap out of the hallucination long enough to perform.

A few years later - Sisto thinks it was in a production of "Pippin" - there was a performer who couldn't remember when it was his turn to speak. But the man had a knack for remembering numbers and was able to recall that after another actor spoke 35 words, then it was his turn to deliver a line.

"Something about being in the play allows consumers to be able to control their symptoms," Sisto says.

Initially, the Players had no funding, and all the staff were volunteers; the cost of equipment rental and performance venues came from fundraising. In 1999, FREE applied for financial assistance to create a day treatment service that focused on using theater arts as a way to gain skills and control symptoms. The funding came through in 2005.

A socialization experience

A typical budget for a production is around $14,000. Sisto can save money by scouring eBay for props - such as the cymbals he's currently hunting down to help the "Guys and Dolls" mission band in the "Follow the Fold" number.

For participants like Brennan, an aspiring computer maven awaiting word on a job he's applied for at a local Applebee's, being a member of the Players is a unique socialization process. The other members of his trio have degrees of mental retardation and autism.