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No Child
Written and Performed By Nilaja Sun
Produced by Lookingglass Theatre Company
821 N. Michigan Avenue ( Water Tower Waterworks)
Chicago, IL
Tickets: 312-337-0665 or www.lookingglasstheatre.org
Wed thru Sun at 7:30 pm, matinees Sat & Sun at 3:00 pm; $25-$55
Running time is 65 minutes with no intermission
Through November 11th
Humor Tells a Sad But True Story
If there were an award for artists who bare their souls to get to the truth of their experiences, Nilaja Sun would be by nominee for this season. Her one-woman recreation of a mythical Bronx secondary called Malcolm X High shouts the truth of her experience as a teaching artist in an urban wasteland where children are worse than forgotten. As Ms Sun says, Malcolm X doesn’t prepare its students for life; it prepares them for prison. Her humor and compassion in bringing the kids to life creates a lot of laughter, but it also touches nerves and forces one to look into the face of an education system that leaves so many children behind. Ms Sun eloquently shows us why this should happen to no child.
The focus of the show is on a visiting teaching artist who has come to direct a play with a cast made of members from one of the worst classes in the school. The audience meets a large array of school characters from the loveable janitor to teachers, administrators, parents and, of course…the kids. They are unforgettable. Sun uses nothing more than a bare stage and a handful of props to conjure up this almost surreal setting, but the characters have depth that is rare for this solo genre. By the end of the show when she waxed on about how the individual students turned out, I cared. I felt my own spirit soar as she described achievements that seemed more hoped for than real and I died a little as she described tragic ends rooted in experience as heavy as concrete. The best one-person shows, even the ones with serious messages to deliver, usually leave me more entertained than enlightened. No Child is more than that; it is a true theatrical experience.
No Child is in its first presentation outside New York, where it ran to critical acclaim off-Broadway for nearly a year. There are no bells and whistles or whizz-bang effects to the show and the range of expression is bound by the narrow, urban world that spawned Sun’s experience. There is nothing fancy at all, just a meaningful story brought to life by a talented young artist who is blessed with the eyes to see the world around her and the heart to put the truth of that experience onstage for all to see. Artistically, Ms. Sun has taken the first step of courageously opening her soul. If, as her career grows, she is able to use those same skills of observation and giving to touch broader topics, her future could be as lofty as her dreams for the children she so clearly loves. Lookingglass deserves a lot of credit for bringing Sun to Chicago.
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Randy Harwick
randyontheglobe@yahoo.com for comments
Date Reviewed: October 6, 2007
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