“No Child…” at Long Wharf an original magical education


NEW HAVEN — What a gift to be able to experience the fantastic one-woman play, “No Child…” performed by the incomparable Nilaja Sun, the show’s creator.
Other fine actors have performed this play that originated Off-Broadway in 2006, now running at the Long Wharf Theatre’s Stage II through April 18, but there is nothing like seeing the original.
The story follows Sun’s own experience as a visiting teacher at Malcolm X High School in the Bronx-teaching 27 students to perform a play in six weeks as part of an $8,000 grant.
As she explains, it is a play within a play within a play, with the student’s being asked to perform a real play called “Our Country’s Good,” which is about Australian convicts performing a play dealing with sexuality, punishment and their judicial system.
Sun plays all the characters in this jam-packed 70-minute show, from the wizened old janitor who is the show’s historian and narrator, to the no-nonsense school principal, Mrs. Kennedy, to the South Park-like teacher Miss Tam, to herself as the energetic, positive, at times overwhelmed and discouraged teacher.
Sun imbues the students she plays with a believable and natural coolness and the astounding energy and life force of youth. She remarkably and almost magically morphs from one character to the next before your eyes.
Using nothing more than an accent, movement, body posture, tone, and expression, she embodies the charismatic and confident Shandrika Jones; the unintelligible, mumbling Phillip; the shy sweet Chris; to the students’ natural leader, the intelligent therefore understandably furious Jerome, and many others.
The play was written at the height of the last administration’s cynical attempt to impose unrealistic expectations on the national school system through the unfunded, federally mandated law — “No Child Left Behind.” The result she points out, is an impoverished, hellish, and inequitable education system that successfully oppresses those who are already severely marginalized.
It’s still relevant today, and will continue to be so as long as poverty is tolerated in the richest nation in the world. Her clear agenda is that if you teach solely to the test and eliminate what some consider the “extras” such as the arts, the possibility for real learning and growth is stunted.
What you end up with, as one of her characters aptly observes, in an institution with metal detectors, armed police officers, and bars on the windows, is nothing more than a training camp for future prison inmates.
“We are getting them ready for jail,” she says at one of her low points in the play. “We’ve abandoned them and I’m abandoning them too.”
As Sun says, 79 percent of the students she sees have endured physical, emotional, and sexual abuse. “They need a miracle everyday,” she discouragingly concludes.
And yet, this is a show of bottomless hope and great humor, with humanity and real accomplishments, in which the children and all who are connected with them, grow and change.
Like a true natural teacher, Sun says to Hispanic, doomed Jose, who complains that he is bored, “Boring usually comes from boring people.” She also points out that more than dying, “public speaking is the number one fear of adults.”
She states simple truths that are sometimes forgotten, like “habits are difficult to break.”
True, most in the audience, unlike most the students Sun respectfully and lovingly channels, have seen their fair share of plays, and know that thespians are not gay.
Still, what a terrific way to be reminded of our common humanity, the healing power of forgiveness, and of our responsibility and ability to make a positive difference in this world one person at a time.
“Hush, hush,” the janitor says to the audience. “You could learn a little something.”
And we do.

NO CHILD

three and ½ Stars
Location: 222 Sargent Drive, New Haven
Production: Written and performed Nilaja Sun. Directed by Hal Brooks. Off-Broadway set design by Narelle Sissons. Off-Broadway costume design by Jessica Gaffney. Lighting design by Mark Barton. Off-Broadway sound design by Ron Russell.
Running time: 70 minutes with no intermission.
Show Times: Tuesdays, most Wednesdays, and Sunday March 28 at 7 p.m. Wednesday March 24 at 7:30 p.m. with no matinee that day. Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays at 8 p.m., with Sunday and most Wednesday matinees at 2 p.m. and Saturday matinees at 3 p.m. through April 18.
Tickets: start at $45. For more information call their box office at 203-787-4282, or visit their website at www.longwharf.org.
ACTOR…CHARACTER
Nilaja Sun as herself