Reviewed by Judy Richter
The 2002 federal No Child Left
Behind Act passed congressional and presidential muster out of a shared concern
about the nation's schools. Since then it has generated some controversy. It
has apparently led to higher achievement in many schools, as measured by
standardized tests, but its detractors say that it encourages teaching to the
test and leaves less time for other learning and creativity.
Playwright-performer
Nilaja Sun takes
the title of her solo work, "No Child..." from that law, but she
bases the work more on her experiences as a teaching artist in New York for
nine years. Presented by Berkeley Repertory Theatre and directed by Hal Brooks, her fictionalized story is set
in a high school in Bronx, a poverty-stricken neighborhood with all the
accompanying social ills.
Wearing
blue pants and a white short-sleeved shirt (costume design by Jessica
Gaffney), Sun
portrays 17 characters -- male and female, young and old -- in her 70-minute,
award-winning show, running without intermission. Her central character is Miss
Sun, who is to spend six weeks at Malcolm X High School working with a class of
10th graders to stage a play. It's the most difficult group of students in the
school, with no teacher lasting more than a few weeks before giving up. Mostly
minority students, they're from struggling homes. They're belligerent,
chronically tardy, foul-mouthed and highly skeptical.
Undeterred,
Miss Sun insists on higher standards of conduct, yet remains nonjudgmental as
she introduces the students to her chosen play, "Our Country's Good," written by Timberlake
Wertenbaker in
1988 and based on a true story. Set in an British penal colony in Australia in
the late 18th century, "Our Country's Good" concerns a British
officer's effort to get a group of prisoners to stage a play, George Farquhar's "The Recruiting
Officer," a
1706 English Restoration comedy that was popular at the time. Coincidentally,
Berkeley Rep presented "Our Country's Good" in 1991 under the
direction of Tony Taccone, who has since become the theater's artistic director.
Sun
uses no props other than a broom and some plastic stacking chairs and performs
against a stark background of painted, stained brick walls and two doors -- one
the janitor's closet, the other leading to the classroom. The original off
Broadway set design by Narelle Sissons has been locally adapted by Sibyl Wickersheimer
with lighting by
Mark Barton and
sound by Ron Russell.
With
her expressive face and limber body, the diminutive Sun easily transforms
herself from the age-bent janitor, who has been at the school since 1958 and
who serves as a sort of narrator, to the stern but supportive principal, a
macho security guard and the timid Chinese American teacher who quits soon
after Miss Sun arrives. Her minority students include the swaggering Jerome, the
tongue-tied Phillip, a sassy, jiving black girl, a Puerto Rican boy whose
brother is shot and killed, and a terribly shy boy. They're so challenging that
she tries to quit midway through her assignment. She tells Mrs. Kennedy, the
principal, that the school is "getting them ready for jail."
Nevertheless, she decides to go on, achieving some breakthroughs and apparently
helping some of the students go on to better things.
Like
"Our Country's Good," "No Child..." is about the redemptive
power of theater. Characters in both plays are the lowest rungs of society, yet
because a few people in authority believe in them, they learn some valuable
lessons. Nilaja Sun's insightful writing and powerful acting skills help to
create a sense of hope.
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