The number of participants attending his workshops fluctuated. He would begin with a dozen, but the numbers repeatedly dwindled, often leaving only one performer.

But the actors and Myrvaagnes did succeed in putting together, rehearsing and performing monologues.

Myrvaagnes says he recalls one woman’s story about a community of homeless people living on federal land near MIT. She spoke of the community as family and the land as home.

He also praises one short play his performers improvised called The Happy Homeless Shelter.

“It was a brilliant satire,” Myrvaagnes says. “‘The Happy Shelter’ served caviar and everyone wore tuxedos. It became a description of what shelter life is really like through opposites and grotesque contrasts.”  

Another scene, titled “The Bench,” was performed by a mother and daughter who had been homeless several years before. The two characters sat on a bench, debating whether political protest was useful.

“It was like Beckett. It was beautiful,” says Myrvaagnes, who played a passerby in the scene.

The three actors performed “The Bench” in Boston Common and at a Masschusetts insurance agency.

Growing Pains

But by fall 2002, Myrvaagnes says he realized the Out-Cast Project needed more than he was able to give.

His grant requests were denied, and the Actors Workshop was bulldozed and replaced by luxury condominiums.

Above all, Myrvaagnes says he did not have the experience or leadership to make the project a success.

“I expected to be a facilitator. I thought that once people had the idea and the space they would do it,” he says.

Myrvaagnes says he still believes “in the power of theater as a method to exorcise or counter difficult issues,” but he calls his experience “humbling and sobering.”

Yet, despite his regrets and the difficulties he encountered, Myrvaagnes says he has not given up.

He recently visited the Los Angeles-based theater that inspired the Out-Cast Project.

He says he hopes to continue working with the homeless and is looking at jobs as a case-manager for homeless individuals. He has a long-term ambition to pursue drama therapy. And this past fall, he was able to work with his hero—the man who started it all—as a researcher in Peter Sellars’ production of The Children of Herakles at the American Reparatory Theater.