From January through April of this year, actor Edwin Lee Gibson has spent only about a month total in his Hill District apartment. It lacks any furniture except for an air mattress. Gibson has been working in New York City, doing some TV work or performing in shows like Minetta Lane Theatre's recent production of Caryl Churchill's Love and Information. Then he catches a bus to spend Mondays and Tuesdays in Pittsburgh before circling back to NYC.
The reason: He's volunteering here with Service Access for Youth Engaged in Service. SAY YES is a Gay and Lesbian Community Center drop-in program for "all GLBTQIA youth who are currently experiencing or are in danger of becoming homeless." It caters to adults age 25 and under, offering services like health care, job-search assistance and education. (The SAY YES coalition also includes the Homeless Children's Education Fund, UPMC and other organizations.)
Gibson got involved after initially contacting HCEF to become a tutor. When organizers saw his resume, they suggested he teach theater classes instead.
"I think about ... what these young people are able to do because they're so much smarter than we are," says Gibson. "What they're able to do, potentially, is great, and if I can have a hand in that, I'm all the better for it."
Gibson's acting credits include guest-starring on Law & Order and winning an OBIE award, in 2006, for his performance in Will Power's The Seven. With GLCC, he started out teaching an acting class, but switched his focus to play-reading and creative writing. He sensed that acting wasn't holding his students' interest. Printing out readings that students could look over on their own time lent itself better to the casual nature of a drop-in class. And by encouraging them to write their own plays, he could help students make their voices heard. That's important to Gibson, who is a stutterer.
"When I was 6 years old, I was having a really intense stuttering block with my parents and one of my brothers one night," he says. "And I said, ‘Ah, forget it.' My dad, who was a garbage man [with a] fourth-grade education, said, ‘No, say what you have to say. We'll wait. Your voice is important.'
"I never want anyone, especially any young person, to feel like ... there's something that they can't say. Or that there's not space for them to say what they want to say, however they want to say it."
