The Yellow Boat

Youth play helps audiences of all ages deal with serious issues

By Stephanie Edward

Photo by Jan Belk

The Yellow Boat isn’t typical children’s theater. A production of the Chattanooga Theatre Centre’s James K. Steakley/Meyer Winer Youth Theatre, The Yellow Boat tells the story of playwright David Saar’s son, Benjamin, who was born with hemophilia and died at age 8 of AIDS-related complications. The play addresses these serious issues while maintaining the lighter tone of a traditional youth theater presentation. As a result, it has value and appeal to both children and their parents.

Through the eyes of a child

One of the special aspects of The Yellow Boat is that it’s told from a child’s point of view. The play opens with Benjamin, portrayed by 12-year-old Jake Van Valkenburg, telling his life story in a manner anything but “linear.” Instead, says director Maria Chattin-Carter, it goes every which way, as far and as wide as Benjamin wants it to go. “You don’t go from point A to point B,” she says, “… it’s a fantasy world.” A sprinkling of humor, despite the serious subject matter, helps endear Benjamin and his story to children in the audience.
The youngest actor in the cast, Jake is joined by four high school actors who play Benjamin’s drawings, come to life.
Because The Yellow Boat is performed by and for young people, a representative from Chattanooga Cares, an AIDS/HIV support and educational organization, came to rehearsal to talk with the cast about the medical issues the play addresses. While “there’s still so much about AIDS and HIV that we don’t understand now,” Chattin-Carter says, the play can help younger audiences, especially, understand these conditions; Benjamin’s character can explain Hemophilia Type A in appropriately childlike terms, unencumbered by technicalities that would just get in the way.

A family connection

The fact that a real-life family portrays the family in the play also makes this production unique. Jake and his parents, Rodney and Julie Van Valkenburg, say acting out Benjamin’s story as a family has been a wonderful, though somber, experience for them.
“Even though you know it’s make-believe, there’s still that emotion,” Rodney says.
Jake says he had hoped they would be able to perform as a family. “I really hoped we all did it together because we have a connection to it.” One of their close family members died of AIDS, he explains.
Working with members of a family also can benefit the director. There’s rarely a need to push them to act as a real family would; it comes naturally, as it should. This becomes evident during rehearsal, as Julie reaches down to ruffle her son’s hair or Rodney rushes to his son’s side to comfort him. The emotion, the love, is already there, making each scene all the more powerful.
“You have to live a little bit of a life to be able to play a parent, and play it effectively,” Chattin-Carter says.

Not just “fluff”

It’s important for audiences and actors alike to recognize that youth theater can effectively take on heavy subjects—not “just the fun, make-believe fluff,” the director says. “… it’s important for youth to do this type of stuff, as well as see this type of stuff.”
The Yellow Boat is certainly not a happy-go-lucky play with a fairy-tale ending. It deals with a very deadly and a very real illness that still might not be understood as well as it should be. This lack of understanding makes for uncomfortable silences when words would do so much. The play is a good way of comfortably opening up discussions about serious illnesses like AIDS, especially with younger people, Chattin-Carter says.
“It’s as much about how to be a better friend and be a better parent when you’re dealing with these difficult illnesses,” she says. “Benjamin’s parents learn how to deal with his sickness and learn how to care for him as best they can while they have him in their lives.”

Endless possibility

Although it was written nearly 20 years ago, The Yellow Boat is a relatively unknown play. Still, Chattin-Carter says, “it’s such a worthy piece of literature that needs to be performed and seen.”
The driving force of the play is the main character’s imagination; a gifted artist, Benjamin punctuates his narration with vivid pictures he “draws” in the air. During rehearsal, assistant director David Seeber encouraged Jake to draw with grand, sweeping motions, so the audience can really see Benjamin’s message—visual representations of his pain and emotion.
The Yellow Boat is not only a play characterized by wild imagination and endless creativity; it’s a story poured forth with love from a father’s pen. As powerful in rehearsal as it is on the stage, the story emits a sense of endless possibility, even in the face of death. Chattin-Carter sums it up best: “It’s not a play about a kid dying; it’s about the life of the child and just the vitality and strength and courage that we can get from children.”

Stephanie Edward is a print journalism major at Southern Adventist University.

The Yellow Boat by David Saar plays March 6–15 at the Chattanooga Theatre Centre, located at 400 River St., next to Coolidge Park. Curtain is 7:30 p.m. Fridays and 2:30 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays. Tickets are $7 and $9 and can be purchased by phone at 267-8534 or online at TheatreCentre.com.