IT'S CURTAINS FOR CRACK

Former Addicts Play Old Roles, Find New Life On Stage

Gabriel, a 42-year-old Houstonian, has been there before.

Though a novice actor, Gabriel has the part of Gene, a crack addict, down
cold. He ought to. Gabriel has more than a decade of real-life drug
experience.

In a local play, Gene introduces a young woman, Nikki, to drugs. She is
soon immersed in the miasmatic world of drug addiction as the tale weaves
through her seduction, prostitution, desperation and, ultimately, redemption.

If it sounds real, it should. Every plot twist, turn and line of dialogue
is drawn from the actors' lives.

The actors, of whom all but one lack theater experience, are some of
Houston's drug addicts well down the road to recovery. The play, Change is
Gonna Come, has been performed more than 30 times at homeless shelters,
churches, prisons and addiction recovery centers throughout the Houston area.

Gabriel and his co-stars want to share their message of hope with others
struggling within the clutches of addiction.

And, despite initial cynicism from some audiences, the gritty message often
works.

"Some audiences are like iron, but in the end they always melt," Gabriel said.

The fledgling Houston program, called the Therapeutic Drama Troupe, began
performing in May.

As a longtime crack addict, Gabriel tried recovery before, only to relapse
three times. But it's working this time, he said. Clean for 15 months and
proud of it.

The play's seven other cast members have similarly checkered pasts: heavy
drug consumption, broken families, lost jobs and tenures on skid row.

The members assemble on evenings and weekends when their jobs permit for
rehearsals and performances. They act as much for themselves as their
troubled audiences.

The concept for the therapeutic troupe originated with Victor Ndando-Ngoo
(pronounced "Dan-doe"), a Riverside Hospital chemical dependency counselor
who was born in Cameroon.

The first thing Ndando-Ngoo saw when he arrived in the United States 15
years ago was a television news program that showed a drug raid.

"The movies I saw about America said nothing about this," he recalls. "It
was very frightening to me."

That stuck the issue of drugs in the forefront of his mind, eventually
leading him to choose the counseling profession.

In 1994 Ndando-Ngoo and other Cameroonian-Americans in the Houston area
founded The Motherland, a counseling and therapeutic center for high-risk
youth and adults with addiction problems.

Last year, the drama troupe idea grew from an observation that many of the
people he treated for drug abuse seemed to act their way through life,
often fooling themselves and everyone around them.

"Then, once in recovery, it became obvious: Who better to tell their
stories but them?" he said.

Cast member Halene, 55, and her two children know drug addiction. After she
kicked the habit a decade ago, her addicted children would still come home
for support.

"I learned tough love in the recovery programs," Halene said. "You hurt
them more by always catering to their needs."

It's a lesson she repeats over and over when she plays Nikki's mom who
confronts her daughter in the play.

"Each time I do that scene it touches me very much because I had to do the
same thing with my daughter and son," Halene said.

After each performance, the cast interacts with the audience, sharing their
stories, offering advice and even passing out phone numbers.

"The people can relate to us because this comes from the heart," said
Gabriel, who eventually leads Nikki to recovery in the play. "And sometimes
you see a familiar gleam in their eye afterwards, and that really gives us
hope."

During the wrap-up sessions, just like recovery groups such as Alcoholics
Anonymous and Cocaine Anonymous, the actors use only their first names.

The notion of having former and recovering addicts performing together is
not unique to the Houston troupe.

Across town, at the Salvation Army's Harbor Light Center, former drug
addicts and ex-alcoholics have sung in the center's heralded men's choir
for nine years.

The Harbor Light Choir sings nearly 300 engagements around Houston a year,
from corporate parties to homeless shelters, said Fred Smith, Harbor Light
Center's director. They have produced several compact discs.

Not all choir members stay clean afterward, but most make it, Smith noted.

The choir helps the men, he added, because it acts like a support group for
men trying to put the pieces of their shattered lives back together.

Nationally there are similar programs as well. A series of acting troupes
in Massachusetts, Michigan and Maryland helps older, recovering alcoholics.
And there's an off-Broadway acting group for heroin addicts in New York
called Day Top Village.

All are geared toward accomplishing the same goal: beating addiction.

"Any time you can take folks in recovery and get them together in a joint
project, it can be very therapeutic," said Dr. David Mactas, director of
the Center for Substance Abuse, the U.S. Department of Health and Human
Services agency that distributes federal drug abuse treatment funds to states.

Texas received $89 million in fiscal year 1997 for substance abuse
treatment programs from the center.

Participation in troupes and choirs can be part of an addict's road to
recovery, Mactas said. And if the audience shares similar experiences or
faces similar problems, a performance can benefit them as well.

"To the extent that it taps something in an audience member, it's
wonderful," he said.

In Houston, Rutherford Cravens bore much of the responsibility for taking
the raw experiences of the drama troupe's recovering addicts and
translating them into the hourlong performance.

The play, Cravens said, was written through improvisation.

"They are the most courageous improvisational actors I have ever seen,"
said Cravens, executive director of Shakespeare Outreach, a drama program
affiliated with the University of Houston. "As performers they are
absolutely truthful. They put many other actors to shame."

Cravens had to make do with a shoestring budget. The actors provide their
own costumes and have only a few spare microphones to work with. Most
funding has come from the Cultural Arts Council of Houston / Harris County
and the Texas Commission on the Arts.

Ndando-Ngoo said he hopes to receive additional funding from the Texas
Commission of Alcohol and Drug Abuse, an agency that receives money from
the U.S. Center for Substance Abuse.

Despite their current financial impediments, Cravens and Ndando- Ngoo have
plans for expansion.

After taking a brief hiatus during Christmas, the troupe scheduled a slate
of shows beginning this month. Cravens and the actors are also developing a
play that will include several adolescents.

With rehearsals and performances at least three nights a week performing in
the troupe is a drain on time, certainly, but it's well worth the effort,
said cast member Cathy, 42.

"I've had to switch schedules, stay up nights and days, but I had to do
this," the former crack addict said. "It gives people an understanding of
what it's really like."

As a "functioning addict," Cathy paid her bills on time, but then "smoked
up every penny" that was left over. She says she knew she had a problem
when she was stealing money from her children's piggy banks.

Now, having beaten her addiction, she wants to help others find new lives.

"The old me is back now," Cathy said. "And I sure feel great being part of
the answer."

Copyright 1997 Houston Chronicle