theater

Lydia Jenkins had a ritual. Every afternoon, around the same time, she'd stand at her front window and watch for the 6'5" silhouette of her 22-year-old son to amble through the breezeway of their Mt. Airy apartment building. As soon as she spotted him, she'd walk to the door, undo the locks and welcome him inside.

Jenkins continued to stand at that window and watch the breezeway even months after she learned her son had been shot to death at a club where he was celebrating a friend's birthday. "I'd wait and wait and wait," she says. "But he never came home."

Infuriated by ignorant reactions to his murder, Jenkins decided to channel her grief into a good cause. "People would say, "Oh, he must've been selling drugs.' No — he was going to school. He was trying to support his children," she says. "I didn't want him to be another dead black man. My voice is for my son."

In its second run this year, TOVA's Beyond the Walls: The Road to Redemption offers a means for Jenkins — as well as crime victims, mothers of prisoners and, incredibly, former offenders — to deliver a message of hope and reconciliation. By focusing on real-life stories and examining alternatives to the cycle of violence and revenge, BTW incorporates video, visual art and spoken word in a sort of restorative justice theater.

"Everybody kept saying, "You can't bring these people together. Victims will not want to be in the room with ex-offenders," says TOVA founder and artistic director Teya Sepinuck. But having worked with refugees, teenage runaways and other marginalized groups before, Sepinuck trusted her gut; she was thoroughly convinced of the idea after attending a Faheem Williams march in which she could count on one hand the number of whites in attendance. "Here's this sea of people and I kept thinking, "Why aren't white mothers in the suburbs up in arms that 30 kids got killed last year?' Why do we think this is somebody else's problem?" While the May shows drew an ethnically and socio-economically diverse audience, Sepinuck says it's her dream to see a houseful of suburban parents. "It's a reality they don't know, but should."

Beyond the Walls: The Road to Redemption, Fri., Oct. 14, 7 p.m.; Sat., Oct. 15, 5 p.m.; $15 suggested donation, The Philadelphia Cathedral, 3723 Chestnut St., 215-222-8682.