'Southside' Story: Memories of a Destructive Past

Actor Brings Experience to Inmate Role

Actors often cull from personal experience to make their characters come alive. For Eddie B. Ellis, this isn't much of a stretch.

In "Southside," a play about a Washington high school student who shoots one of his peers, Ellis has the part of Woodie, a longtime prisoner who mentors the young inmate. Woodie tells the newcomer about being incarcerated for manslaughter from age 16 to 31 at places like the "supermax" prison in Florence, Colo. -- references based on Ellis's life.

"It touched me because it brought back memories of my situation," Ellis said during a rehearsal break for the play, which premieres at 7:30 tonight at Flashpoint Gallery.

Ellis's real story: At 15, he was sent to the Oak Hill juvenile detention facility in Laurel for armed robbery. He insisted he was innocent. The court agreed and dismissed the case. But when Ellis got out, he had "so much anger within me that I didn't care anymore."

On Dec. 20, 1991, months after his release, he shot and killed Bert Reid on 14th Street NW. Reid, a soccer player at Bell Multicultural High School, had moved to the District from Trinidad and Tobago. Ellis claimed self-defense, but was convicted of manslaughter and served 15 years. He emerged from prison in August 2006, a grown man who hadn't known freedom since he was a kid.

Since his release, Ellis has become an activist, telling his story of personal reform to college classes, on radio shows and at a forum organized by Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.).

That's where he met John Muller, 23, the co-founder and artistic director of DreamCity Theatre Group, which is producing "Southside." DreamCity, which performs the untold stories of Washington, put on its first show in July 2006. "The 70" portrayed life on the 70 Metrobus line, which runs from Silver Spring to the Southwest waterfront.

After hearing Ellis's speech, Muller approached him and asked that he read an early version of the "Southside" script. Later, Muller interviewed Ellis for more material for the play (Ellis was one of several people to provide such insights). Some of the plot is based on a shooting at Ballou Senior High School in 2004. Though Muller grew up on a horse farm in Montgomery County, he had friends at Ballou.

"I just remember seeing the reaction of the city and the reaction of the students and being able to absorb both sides of it," Muller says. "The city's reaction was to have hearings and make 10-point plans."

His Ballou friends whispered to him the real scoop behind the 2004 shooting, which he didn't hear from the city or the media. He learned that the shooting victim, 17-year-old football player James Richardson, had led a troubled life off the field, including flunking freshman year twice and allegations of violence. (These details came out later in the trial.)

The play "brings life to certain things that people don't like to talk about," Ellis says. "People don't like to talk about the real issues of inner-city violence. A lot of people like to talk about the surface things. So when you dig down into these things, why these kids do what they do . . . I'm not excusing them, but it allows you to understand why."

"Southside," directed by Michael Baron, an associate director at Signature Theatre, will be presented as a theatrical reading rather than a full-scale production. The cast of 10 includes four students. The language is not appropriate for children.