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AS MANY YOUNG ACTORS DO, Steve Kidd had gone in 1997 to Los Angeles to see if he could make it big in the movies. When the scheme didn’t work out, he returned to the East Coast feeling “very self-involved,” as he puts it. Then a friend suggested he volunteer at AmeriKids, a summer camp in Carmel, NY for children with HIV/AIDS.
At the camp, Steve met Victor, a 13-year-old HIV-positive boy who had recently gone blind from a related illness. For a week Steve became Victor’s eyes; in turn, Victor told him stories about his young life and the sadness and joy he’d known even after getting sick. Six months later, Steve learned Victor had died. To keep Victor’s stories alive in the world, Steve found himself writing the beginnings of a play.
In the meantime, Steve embarked on what has since become a busy professional life— working in the summers as Program Director at AmeriKids, and the rest of the year creating projects to teach literacy in schools throughout Rhode Island, via performance and art. For four years he operated TALL, or Transitions through Literacy Learning, for elementary school students in the small town of Central Falls, RI; currently he teaches literacy via theater skills to middle school and high school students in Pawtucket.
His most remarkable venture, however, is “Sigh/Omelas,” the play that emerged from the stories of Victor and other campers at AmeriKids, retold by the characters of a seven- year-old boy with a lisp, a 13-year-old boy who has gone blind, much like Victor, and the loving stepfather of the 13-year-old. Their monologues, intermingled with passages from a story by science fiction writer Ursula K. LeGuin, emphasize the commonality and caring that can be found when we look beyond the stereotypes of illness, appearance, and other seeming differences.
Steve regularly performs the play at middle schools outside Boston, imparting on hundreds of students each year not only the importance of kindness and community, but of volunteering. One eighth-grade class was so inspired they created their own volunteer program, “City Walk,” with the goal of reaching out to needy children, parents, and homeless persons.
What is it about “Sigh/Omelas” that moves its young audiences so? The following lines are an indication; they are spoken by the character inspired by Victor:
I close my eyes and think of pretty songs / of people who treat me with Kindness / who care if I’m here or there.
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