A LOT OF WORK, A LITTLE FAITH AND THE BARD : BUILDING TEEN-AGE SELF-ESTEEM VIA THE WORLD OF SHAKESPEARE.

Byline: Reed Johnson Daily News Staff Writer

Round and around, like creatures gone slightly mad, the students march to a slow, rhythmic chant. Their eerie cadence rises to the upper rows of the gloomy concrete theater, its effect both lyrical and unnerving.

``Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,'' they repeat in loud, stage whispers. ``Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow. Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow!''

If you know your Shakespeare - as these kids, by now, had better - you'll recognize the refrain. It comes, of course, from a famous speech by the medieval Scottish king Macbeth as he ponders the dirty deeds that soon will bring him to a violent and untimely end:

``Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow/Creeps in this petty pace from day to day/To the last syllable of recorded time;/And all our yesterdays have lighted fools/The way to dusty death.''

``OK, very nice work, people, much, much better,'' yells assistant director Aaron Mendelson, who's been scrutinizing the rehearsal from an eighth-row seat at the Los Angeles Theatre Center. ``Give yourselves a hand.''

For these 26 L.A.-area teens, nine of them from the Valley, Macbeth's ominous words have an added echo. Tomorrow, for these students, can't get here soon enough.

Tomorrow (Friday) and the day after tomorrow, they'll be putting on makeup, slipping into Renaissance garb, loosening up their vocal cords and attempting to find the eternal truths in a 400-year-old tragedy written in a flowery variant of a language that many of them still are struggling to master.

Ages 14 to 19, the students are participants in Will Power to Youth, a six-week theater arts and employment program funded by the Los Angeles City Community Development Department. As its name suggests, the program attempts to raise the self-confidence of low-income teens by exposing them to Will, as in William Shakespeare, who's hotter than Toni Braxton these days.

Co-sponsored by Shakespeare Festival/L.A. and the National Conference of Christians and Jews, a nonsectarian human-relations group dedicated to promoting interfaith and multiethnic understanding and tolerance, Will Power has produced seven Shakespeare plays since the late 1980s, including last summer's trimmed-down version of ``Othello.''

Over the next 48 hours, six weeks of classes, all-day rehearsals and sensitivity-training workshops will boil down to two free performances of a one-hour, abridged version of ``Macbeth'' at LATC, on Spring Street in downtown L.A.

Danielle ``Dani'' Bedau, the program's energetically upbeat director, believes that by making the Bard less forbidding, Will Power encourages kids to view themselves as cultural insiders rather than outsiders.

``There's something, for me, really incredible about giving the gift of Shakespeare,'' she says, ``not only to kids who've never been exposed to Shakespeare, but for whom Shakespeare has been a tool to exclude them. Now, they own it.''

Yet for many of the students, the program's greatest rewards may have less to do with iambic pentameter than with the pleasures of forging new relationships, seeing life through the eyes of an alien culture and suddenly finding yourself in another human being's skin.

Kathy Darmandzhyan, a charismatic 17-year-old Armenian-American who attends Polytechnic High School in Sun Valley, didn't expect to be cast in the role of Duncan, the Scottish king Macbeth kills in order to snatch the crown. But she's glad she did. Told that she could play the character either as male or female, she chose the former.

``I can project myself and my voice is kinda deep, and I can kind of carry myself like a man,'' she says, ``so I was really happy when I got the part.''

In bureaucratese - a language as full of covert meanings as anything Shakespeare ever wrote - these students are ``high risk.''

In plain English, they're sensitive, vulnerable adolescents, most of whose parents (or parent, in some cases) have to work grueling hours cleaning houses or cutting metal in a factory to keep the bill collectors at bay. To be eligible for the program, students must meet federal poverty guidelines, meaning an annual household income of $15,600 or less for a family of four. They also must be Los Angeles residents, whether enrolled in public or private schools.

Operating under the year-round calendar used by the Los Angeles Unified School District, the students have been spending their two-month ``vacation'' as paid actors and stagehands. While their friends have been shoveling french fries or hanging around malls, they've been earning $5 an hour to memorize poetry, beat drums, dance and do make-believe sword fighting.

Nice work if you can get, and not many can. Of the 100 or so teens who auditioned for ``Macbeth,'' only one-quarter made the final cut.

The lucky ones are nervous about opening night. You don't want to blow a chance like this, they say.

``If I wasn't here, what would I be doing? Nothing. Just getting into trouble,'' says Jose Ruiz, a 17-year-old former gang member from Pacoima.

Ruiz's schoolmate from San Fernando High School, Adriana Vasquez, 16, reckons she'd be home taking care of her younger sister if she weren't playing the role of a buffoonish doorkeeper, whom Shakespeare uses for comic relief after Macbeth commits murder most foul.

``I hear someone knocking, but I'm taking my sweet time because I'm an old man and it's like I'm a drunk,'' says Vasquez, explaining her character as she grabs a 20-minute break between costume fittings, voice training and rehearsal.

Throughout the rehearsal process, instructors have been getting the students to pay particular attention to ``Macbeth's'' depiction of violence and the ruthless pursuit of power. For background, everyone watched a screening of Roman Polanski's controversial, ultra-gory 1971 movie version.

``The play is pretty much about `what goes around, comes around,' '' says Juan Villanueva, a San Fernando High School senior.

That theme hasn't been lost on Ruiz, the former gang member, who plays three characters: the bleeding captain who heralds Macbeth's pre-Act 1 battlefield triumph; the assassin who kills Lady Macduff; and the Earl of Northumberland.

``I either kill or get killed,'' the boy says. ``They told me I'd be a good murderer.''

Exactly one year ago this week, a friend of Ruiz's was killed in a gang-related incident. Ruiz's older brother is in jail.

Initially, Ruiz was having problems in Will Power, scuffling with another student and getting ticketed by sheriff's deputies when he was caught riding the Metro without a pass.

Lecia Brooks, a National Conference staffer, has been trying to take Ruiz under her wing. Early on, she thought he might quit the program. Now she's betting he'll stick it out. But there are still red flags.

``He's been absent for the last two days. We didn't know whether he was going to show up,'' says Brooks, a young woman who gives the impression that she has her act totally together.

There's an old backstage superstition that ``Macbeth'' is a cursed play. Theater lore is full of opening-night snafus. And a few years ago, a man leaped from a balcony to his death while watching a performance in New York City.

Can the students' hard work, and their instructors' faith in them, alter a history of bad luck?

Jerry Freedman Habush, spokesman for the National Conference, says the program has a strong record of spurring its graduates on to higher achievement. This spring, the National Conference and Shakespeare Festival/L.A. are even throwing a reunion for all past participants in the program, some 200 in all. A few are now grown and working in the arts and entertainment fields, where some of this weekend's cast eventually could wind up.

Where will the others be next week, next year, when the play is done and the set is struck - tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow?

In a cramped basement restroom, Ruiz is trying to make his costume fit. He's as lean as a broadsword, but his black trousers are leaner still.

``Lecia!'' he complains, ``These pants are tight, girl!''

Lecia throws him one of her teasing glares that says, `If you want me to help, better change your tone of voice - pronto.'

``She's been nice,'' Ruiz says of his new friend, ``really, really nice.''

He tries hard not to smile.

The facts

What: Will Power to Youth performs Shakespeare's ``Macbeth.''

When: 7 p.m. Friday and Saturday.

Where: Los Angeles Theater Center, 514 S. Spring St., downtown Los Angeles.

Admission: Free. For information, call the National Conference of Christians and Jews, [phone] or Shakespeare Festival/L.A., [phone], Ext. 13.

CAPTION(S):

6 Photos

Photo: (1--Cover--Color) On the cover: Will Power to Youth brings Shakespeare's ``Macbeth'' to the Los Angeles Theatre Center Friday and Saturday.

(2) The play's the thing for Miriam Arvizu, 17, of Pacoima, rehearsing for Will Power to Youth's abridged ``Macbeth.''

(3) Kathy Darmandzhyan, 17, of Sun Valley plays Duncan, the king Macbeth kills to snatch the crown.

(4) ``If I wasn't here, what would I be doing? Nothing. Just getting into trouble,'' says Jose Ruiz, a 17-year-old former gang member from Pacoima who has three parts in ``Macbeth.''

(5) Veronica Ruano, 15, of San Fernando provides musical backing with a plastic water bottle for the Will Power to Youth production.

(6) San Fernando's Juan Villanueva, 17, prepares props for ``Macbeth,'' the culmination of a theater arts and employment program funded by the Los Angeles City Community Development Department.

Photos by Evan Yee/Daily News