One ASU graduate student is working to make sure teen mothers are better represented in youth theater.
Xanthia Walker, a theatre master’s student, is directing a play that focuses on teen mothers for her applied project.
Walker, who works with community-based theaters, said she noticed many barriers to teen parents participating in productions.
Teen mothers in Walker’s project expressed feeling like they are in between adulthood and adolescence. They want to act like teens but have too many responsibilities, she said.
“I wanted to know what it would be like to try to create a project removing those barriers to entering and focusing specifically on the experience of teen parents,” Walker said.
In the media and social culture, she said, teen parents are stigmatized.
“There’s a lot of propaganda out in the world about how if you mess up and get pregnant too young, your life is over,” Walker said. “There’s no chance for you to be happy and to be a … healthy person who gets a college degree.”
Hearing that as a teen mother can be devastating, she said.
She’s currently in Los Angeles working with Cornerstone Theater Company as an institute associate for her graduate internship and her theater project with teen mothers.
The name of her project and the play is “Not Too Late,” which she said represents how teen mothers still have a chance at a good life.
“It’s very much about recognizing that teen parents have a right to their dreams,” Walker said. “It is a celebration of teen mothers and the things that are good about their lives as well as the things that are hard.”
Her role as director included working to help the teen mothers write and talk about their experiences.
A majority of the play is the exact words of the 13 teen mothers who were involved through El Nido Family Centers’ Pacoima location in Los Angeles county, which is an agency that provides services to teen mothers and others.
“The themes and the content of the work come from the stories that the women want to tell,” Walker said. “My job as the director is to discover those stories, to facilitate dialogues and conversations that bring those stories out into the conversation and into the room.”
Then, Walker said she helps oversee the process where the stories are told in the play and on stage.
She also helped create a public service announcement, which focuses on the same theme of the play — that it’s “not too late.”
“The public service announcement is really focused on the teen moms talking to other teen moms,” she said.
Although teen moms are the main target, Walker said the play and public service announcement can also reach a larger audience.
“I think someone who isn’t a teen parent or a parent at all or a woman could get a lot out of this piece,” Walker said.
There has already been a staged reading of the play, though it is currently under revision, and Walker said she hopes to take it to national play festivals in the future.
Walker plans to open a community-based youth theater company in the near future that may include teen moms.
Laurie Woolery, associate artistic director at Cornerstone Theater Company, was in charge of putting the play together and wrote some parts based on the teen mothers’ feedback.
The teen mothers wanted to help others through the play, she said, and also wanted to gain respect and friendship.
“They started meeting each other and having play dates with their kids and supporting each other through doctors’ visits,” Woolery said, adding that she witnessed one teen mother mentoring another about caring for her daughter.
The group of mothers is already planning on doing another staged reading for pregnant teens.
“Their desire to mentor and support happens because of the play, because of them being able to share their thoughts,” Woolery said.
Stephani Woodson, the associate director of ASU’s School of Theatre and Film, is Walker’s graduate advisor.
“I continue to be impressed with Xanthia’s commitment to working with marginalized populations, bringing her artistic abilities into service of a community to tell the stories that [the] community feels are important,” Woodson said in an e-mail.
Reach the reporter at reweaver@asu.edu
