February 21, 2008 Issue                                       

©2007 The Chestnut Hill Local

Play to be performed downtown next week
Once-homeless teen an award-winning playwright
by LEN LEAR

Marquis Herring (left), who won a playwriting award when he was homeless, and Nia Davis, the other playwriting winner, are seen working on a new poem which will be performed as a bridge piece between their two plays. The plays will be performed at the Suzanne Roberts Theatre by professional casts from Feb. 27 to March 1.

It may be a cliché, but in this case it’s definitely true. When life hands lemons to Marquis Herring, you might say he makes award-winning lemonade. When it rains on his parade, he dances in the rain.

Marquis, 18, who grew up in West Oak Lane, is currently a freshman at Lock Haven University in upstate Pennsylvania, but it’s a good bet that he is unique in his freshman class, both for what he has experienced and for what he created out of that experience.

Over the years, Marquis was a student at the John B. Kelly Elementary School, Clarence E. Pickett Middle School and Parkway Northwest High School for Peace and Social Justice. On the morning of May 4, 2006, his entire family — mom Tanya, 40; brothers Marcellous, 16, and Marqueel, almost 2; and sisters Marissa, 14, and Marrayia, 9 — were awakened by a loud knock on the door.

“When my mom answered the door,” Marquis recalled, “there was someone there saying we had 10 minutes to grab what we could carry and vacate the property. Needless to say, none of us was expecting any of this. All we could do was pack some clothes and sit on the porch as they put a padlock on our front door.” (The landlord, a housing program named Dignity Housing, ordered the eviction after a series of court hearings had attempted to resolve a dispute between the landlord and Marquis’ mother.)

After the shock subsided, Marquis’ mom began looking through the Philadelphia phone directory to find a shelter where the family could stay through the night. Eventually, they ended up at the Eliza Shirley House, 1320 Arch St. After a week at that facility, the family was sent to Travelers Aid of Philadelphia, 111 N. 49th St., where they spent 14 months.

(For those who might be curious about the father of the four Herring children, Marquis said he has “never been a part of our family, but within the past four or five years, he has tried very hard to be there for me and support me on a financial basis. I see him every so often, but definitely not as often as I would like.”)

“The time we spent at the Eliza Shirley House was pretty good,” said Marquis. “We were homeless, but the staff members were really caring and understanding of how we felt. Travelers Aid of Philadelphia, however, wasn’t as pleasant. There were constant fights among the residents of the shelter, and the staff members there were rather unpleasant.

“They often treated us more like statistics than people. I have to admit, just being in an environment like that often made me feel like things were hopeless; there were even times where I wanted to give up on school and life in general. Thankfully, my mom (Tanya Herring) and my teacher (at Parkway Northwest High School), Beverly Trimboli, never gave up on me and wouldn’t let me give up on myself. During the school year of 2006, ‘Ms. Bev’ had every one of us write a play for our drama class and told us it was to be submitted to Philadelphia Young Playwrights’ annual playwriting competition.

“I wasn’t exactly in the mood to submit, let alone, write a play, but she wouldn’t hear of me not writing one. So she looked over my shoulder every day during class to make sure I was writing it, and when I was in our room at the shelter, my mom made sure I was doing everything I needed to do in order to pass and enjoy my junior year of high school. My mom did everything in her power to help me and my brother and sisters do well in school; from reading with my baby sister to doing math with my little brother, she did it all.”

Then one day during the summer of 2006, Marquis got a phone call from Philadelphia Young Playwrights informing him that his play had been chosen as one of the first-place winners and would be performed at Temple University that September. In  the following year, 2007, Marquis was motivated to take advanced playwriting workshops with Young Playwrights. He also managed to win their playwriting competition again that year and had his recent play, The Choices We Make (the play about issues of violence being produced by PTC starting Feb. 27), produced at Temple University again.

Thanks to the ongoing encouragement and support of his mom, Ms. Trimboli and Philadelphia Young Playwrights, Marquis graduated from Parkway Northwest and is now attending Lock Haven University. “I’m glad to say that I’m enjoying my freshman year so far,” he told us last week, “regardless of the rigorous work I have to do as an English major and Theater minor. Sadly, my family still has not found a home of their own, so they’re staying with some friends for the time being, but my mom still has great hope that things will get better, and she continues to support me and send me her love and blessings, as does my teacher and mentor Ms. Beverly Trimboli and the staff members of Philadelphia Young Playwrights, whom I have come to think of as family. I’m just really grateful to them all for always believing in me.”

Herring has now written five plays all told, two of which (the award winners) have been produced. Each runs between 30 and 45 minutes long. Marquis’ play, along with one by a Northeast Philadelphia teenager named Nia Davis, will be presented as fully staged professional productions by Philadelphia Young Playwrights, in association with Philadelphia Theatre Company, from Feb. 27 through March 1. Part of Young Playwrights’ Play Development Series and 20th anniversary year, the award-winning plays will be featured on the main stage of the Suzanne Roberts Theatre, 480 S. Broad St. They will be directed by Charles Dumas with additional direction and choreography by Myra Bazell. Performances are open to the general public with free admission for school groups. All matinee performances include a post-show interactive discussion focusing on non-violence and conflict resolution. For more information, visit www.phillyyoungplaywrights.org or call 215-665-9226.

Marquis Herring’s The Choices We Make draws from Marquis’ personal experiences with homelessness and his time living in a shelter with his mother and siblings. In the play, when his brother is shot and killed, Marquis is forced to make a crucial choice between retaliation and non-violence that will affect the rest of his life. The choices made to walk away from violence or continue the chain of bloodshed have consequences for each character.

“Marquis and Nia are wonderfully accomplished young people and incredibly talented artists,” said Glen Knapp, Executive Producing Director of Young Playwrights. “We are proud to feature the visions and messages of these playwrights, particularly when too many of our city’s young people have lost their lives to acts of violence. As we all search for solutions and with our new year already darkened by daily stories of students in violent conflict, Marquis and Nia’s timely plays show us young people grappling with violence and, ultimately, making choices to overcome it.”