Photo by Timothy Moder
“In my own small way in just a few hours I have seen something change.” So recites Philip, a soft-spoken young man in a present-day Bronx classroom full of “academically and emotionally challenged youth.” Next Act Theatre’s No Child is an exemplary one-woman show exploring the work of teaching artist Nilaja Sun in the United States’ poorest congressional district. With direction by Mary MacDonald Kerr and a brilliant performance by Marti Gobel in 16 distinct roles, the production is a clear-eyed exploration of the U.S. educational system, the value of arts programming and of hope that defies circumstances.
Playwright Sun is a real-life performer and theater educator and her time spent directing a play about an Australian penal colony at New York’s Malcolm X High School is the basis for No Child. The writing is both surreal and musical in its many-voiced structure, and elegantly clear in its realistic account.
Pulling no punches, Sun explores the many ways in which our educational system keeps students in a cycle of despair and underachievement. In a memorable scene, she indicts standardized testing as having “nothing to do with actual skills. We’re not training them to be leaders but to go to jail. We abandon them.”
No Child is a story of hope, but not a sentimental one. Not everyone makes it to the performance. Tragedy befalls the school even in the six short weeks the action covers. But the show must go on, and does.
Gobel’s performance is vital to the production’s success in communicating this hope. Each of her characters has a fully realized vocal and physical embodiment. Her transitions are crisp, making it easy to track who is speaking even when Sun’s fast-paced script means that dialogue moves like a ping pong ball. Gobel is a masterful storyteller telling a timely story.
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No Child runs through Feb. 22 and is presented in partnership with Ronald Reagan Baccalaureate High School, which will produce Our Country’s Good (the piece Sun’s students undertake in No Child) at Next Act, March 13-15. The theater is located at 255 S. Water St. For tickets to either show, call 414-278-0765 or visit nextact.org.
