Healing Arts

GRANADA HILLS — For more than a year, Luane Sugerman nurtured the idea of a sophisticated arts program for children and adults at the North Valley Jewish Community Center. But after an avowed racist went on a shooting rampage there in August, the idea was put on the back burner.

Until now. Sixteen newly hired teachers will lead 28 classes in theater, music and art starting Jan. 3 in a new Center of the Arts program, which will hold an open house today from 2 to 4 p.m.

Sugerman, who has been affiliated with the JCC for 35 years, taught a singing and acting workshop at the community center before heading the arts program. She is betting that parents and their children, hungry for creative endeavors, will make time in their busy schedules and sign up.

“Somehow, in this society we have to start redirecting [people’s] attention and energies to something that will make their lives better. Involvement in the arts is good for the soul,” said Sugerman.

The ambitious program symbolizes another step in the JCC’s recovery from the horrors of Aug. 10, when Buford O. Furrow Jr. allegedly walked in with an assault rifle and started shooting, injuring a receptionist, a teenage camp counselor and three boys. An hour later, in Chatsworth, he allegedly shot and killed U.S. postal worker Joseph Ileto, a 39-year-old Filipino American, because he was a nonwhite in a government uniform, authorities allege.

These days, two security guards stand watch outside the center, a grim reminder of what happened last summer.

“The [shooting] bonded the staff as nothing else could have bonded them,” said Sugerman, who lives in Northridge. “In a way, it instilled some vitality into members, board members and staff, who are saying, ‘We’re not going to let this get us down. We’re going to do great things here.’ ”

The new arts program also marks an effort by the JCC to reach more people--non-Jews as well as Jews. In the last 15 years, many Jewish families have moved away from the northwest Valley, contributing to a 20% drop in the JCC’s membership, Sugerman said. Currently, about 300 families are members.

Sugerman said she hopes the classes will help compensate for insufficient arts education in schools and for the dearth of places where families can enjoy art together.

To feed people’s cultural appetites, the center will offer an eclectic array of challenging, sometimes offbeat classes for kids and adults, such as mime, swashbuckling and Shakespeare. There also will be several courses in jazz singing, acting, tap dance and sculpture.

Children will learn what it’s like to play in an orchestra, through a youth symphony course. Members of the New Valley Symphony will mentor the students.

Irene Silbert of Santa Susana, who will teach Shakespeare, said she is confident children will not be scared off by the complexity of the Bard because they will focus on acting out the plays rather than studying them.

“Kids don’t know to be scared--only teenagers know to be scared of Shakespeare. If you get them early and you present it in a fun manner, then they come away saying, ‘Shakespeare was really fun. I want to do more,’ ” said Silbert, a freelance artist who teaches summer drama workshops at Cal State Northridge.

All the classes will be offered at the JCC, which has eight classrooms, a dance studio, two indoor production spaces and an outdoor amphitheater. Classes will last eight weeks and cost $90 to $400.

The center will host a festival in May, when students will have a chance to showcase what they have learned.

Bonnie Kipper, 42, a singer, said she and her son, Doron, 11, plan to register for acting and singing classes and to perform together.

But Doron will probably most enjoy swashbuckling, Kipper said.

“He has a lot of plastic swords. He is constantly running around with his friends and me trying to fence. . . . Now he will have a forum for this,” said Kipper, of Northridge.

With Sugerman at the helm, the program has a good chance to succeed, Kipper said. Within two weeks of the August shooting, Sugerman organized several professional performers for a production thanking the community for its support.

“[Sugerman] is trying to create more than classes here. She’s trying to create a community based on the arts,” Kipper said. “It’s a wonderful, much-needed thing.”

*

For more information about the Center of the Arts, call (818) 360-2211.