SAN DIEGO (KGTV) — Homeless and formerly homeless playwrights are seeing their plays performed for the first time this weekend in downtown San Diego. The plays bring their real-life experiences to the stage.
"What am I expecting? Razzle dazzle," playwright Oskar Villarberg said before the show. He is proud of the production they have put together.
"It's my stories. They are real," fellow writer Laura Morgan said. "They're from my own life."
Elisa Arenas is also watching her story on stage. "I started writing and then I realized I had something to say," she said.
All three playwrights were homeless at some point in their lives.
"My story is really rough. My story is down on the ground, homeless concrete stories," Morgan said.
The playwrights are seeing their writing come to life through stories about being homeless and their struggles. The scripts have been revised and are being performed by professional actors at the Neil Morgan Auditorium, near the Downtown San Diego Central Library.
"I think everything, 56 years of living in this world, has come down to this point," Villarberg said. "This is the moment where I feel like I've given everything I have into this writing at this moment of hope and the future."
The play is part of a program organized by Father Joe's Villages and financed by a grant from California Humanities.
"It's helped a lot more than all the therapy I've ever been to," Morgan said of the writing experience. "I go to therapy and I've taken medications, but ... this is like letting go of something. To be able to write it down and to be able to share it, not hide it."
While it is special for the playwrights to see their stories on the stage, watching their reactions is even more heartwarming.
Arenas couldn't hold back the tears, though she said before the show they would probably be flowing.
Villarberg was fighting them back during the performance too. "I have to believe in myself and I have to trust the process in this whole journey of life," he said.
Morgan said she struggles to accept a compliment but admits one thing. "I am proud. It's hard for me to be proud of myself," she said. "I was taught to be humble and to be grateful when I was a child. So it's really hard for me to say, 'Look at what I did.'"
