With his parents’ financial support and encouragement, Myrvaagnes set out to realize his vision.

Myrvaagnes toured Boston-area homeless shelters, speaking with directors and guests, putting up flyers and making announcements at meals. He scheduled informal meetings, introducing his ideas and teaching basic theater games to willing participants at the shelters.

Setting Up Shop

Michael Sullivan, director of Bread and Jams, a Cambridge-based agency that provides services to the city’s homeless population, was particularly receptive to Myrvaagnes and urged homeless individuals to give the theater program a try.

So Myrvaagnes began holding regular informal meetings at Bread and Jams, often gathering people together in the parking lot.

He says he taught participants theater games “to give people a taste of what was not rational” in their daily routines.

He also wrote scripts that the actors could perform for each other.

One day, while Myrvaagnes was introducing theater exercises, a man interrupted to talk about a frustrating experience earlier that day at a social services agency. He said he had been unable to pick up his social security check because he had been listed as deceased.

Myrvaagnes says he was struck by the pain and passion in the man’s tale and with the other participants at Bread and Jams. Myrvaagnes scripted a one-act play about the man’s experience. They rehearsed and scheduled a performance for Oct. 2001 outside the Holyoke Center to coincide with the opening of a new art installation there.

But on the day of the performanc, with an audience of over 40 people assembled, the man on whose story the play was based disappeared. Myrvaagnes had to step in and play the lead role.

The show went on, but the man’s disappearance was a blow for the cast and for Myrvaagnes.

From Scripts to Stage

But Myrvaagnes persisted with his project, setting up meetings and rehearsals at The Actors Workshop on Boylston Street, across from a shelter.

He says he stopped writing scripts because he thought the homeless people he was working with should speak in their own words.

“I felt initially that if I wrote a script for someone that it would be helping them,” he says. “I guess I would say in retrospect I should have known better, but I learned.”