Brooklyn Theater Revival Bridges Generation Gap

What do a group of kids in Brooklyn have in common with Manhattan kids from the 1930s?

Both star in a quintessential New York City narrative, and both are living through periods of income inequality.

The Irondale Ensemble Project – an acting company that combines professional actors with local kids who are interested in studying the craft of acting – has revived Sidney Kingsley’s 1935 play “Dead End.”

The play follows a group of kids growing up in Manhattan’s east side ghetto, just as the first luxury apartments started to rise nearby – the rich versus the poor, the haves versus the have-nots, much like Mayor Bill de Blasio’s “Tale of Two Cities” campaign rhetoric. The poor kids are already on the path to a life of crime, and some dream of growing up to be mobsters or to get out of the slums and marry rich.

“[The play] really deals with a city in great flux,” said Terry Greiss, Irondale’s executive director and one of the stars of the show. “If you took away the 1930s [setting], it could be a play about today. The stakes were pretty dire, as they are for some today.”

The original 1930s version featured a cast of kids – known as the “Dead End Kids” and later the “Bowery Boys” – who starred in roles fit for their ages and even played adults. This cast is no different, and half the ensemble is made up of local kids with a passion for the stage.

“Kids from this generation are embracing their counterparts from 80 years ago,” Greiss said.

Irondale offers 160 hours of free training to kids in the New York City area, mostly from Brooklyn, and the kids are mentored by the company’s professional players.

And “Dead End,” which the ensemble spent two weeks workshopping and preparing, was one the group’s hardest productions to master. The language from the ’30s is so strikingly different from today’s vernacular, Greiss said, and it was a challenge to even get their mouths around some of the “dems” and “dese” and “does.” He said a lot of it was barely intelligible in writing and begged to be spoken out loud.

“Embracing the language of the play is as rigorous and difficult as Shakespeare,” Greiss said. “For non-pros, it’s Herculean.”

Greiss said Irondale is always looking to produce plays that have social relevance – like “Dead End” has with the rising inequality in the city – and wants to include the audience in the experience as much as possible. “Dead End” features a bare set, and audience members mingle at the bar on the stage floor before the show begins. Once the lights go down, audience members find their seats.

“The audience has a direct effect on the theatrical event,” Greiss said. “All [theater] needs is a person who wants to hear a story and a person who wants to tell a story.”

“Dead End” runs this Wednesday through Saturday at 7:30 p.m. at Irondale’s theater, located at 85 South Oxford Street between Cumberland Street and South Portland Avenue in Fort Greene. This is the last week of the show, and tickets are $25.