As the heat rises between Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis, the state of Chicago public education has come under the stage lights in a trifecta of new plays this past year. I missed both Ike Holter’s “Exit Strategy” with Jackalope and Joe Zarrow’s “Principal Principle” at Stage Left, and have regrets on both counts. Now, Collaboraction takes us into the classroom/boxing ring for “Forgotten Future: The Education Project.” Obviously I can’t say how well it stands in comparison with those previous entries. Then again, this show makes a pretty convincing case that the obsession with test scores and school rankings is part of the cancer, not the cure, for our public education ills.
Conceived and written by theater artist and educator Sarah Moeller, with writing assists from Adam Seidel and Michele Stine, and co-directed by Moeller and John Wilson, “Forgotten Future” follows three kids in three separate schools over the course of one year. Each of their stories is mirrored by a classroom teacher and parent.
The beauty part is that these kids are played by actual children. The problem is that their stories still sometimes get lost in the soapbox pontificating from the grown-ups that doesn’t provide new information to anyone who has paid the slightest attention to educational issues in the last several years.
Leah Aberman plays Lauren, the white, overachieving middle schooler whose father (Nathaniel Swift) has convinced her that her grades and test scores “need to be more perfect” for her to obtain that Holy Grail of public high school admissions — Northside College Prep.
Tyrese Hall is Issac, a black sixth-grader on the South Side who is forced to negotiate a perilous 30-minute walk to a new school through “safe zones” after his old building is closed, and who is bullied once he gets there, a state of affairs that his passionate mother (Ebony Joy) cannot stand and that his well-meaning but overworked teacher (Susie Griffith) can’t quite overcome.
Carolina (Esme Ayvar-Perez) is the child of Latino immigrants whose mother (Jasmin Cardenas) wants her to be the first in the family to graduate high school, maybe even go to college. But though Carolina is obviously bright, she has a tough time believing that education will change her circumstances. The nerdy white newbie history teacher (Scott Merchant) has a tough time breaking through her defenses.
Undeniably there is a whiff of “let’s fulfill a demographic checklist” in telling these stories, but that goes away when the kids are front and center. Whether it’s Hall’s Issac explaining why he loves Batman, Aberman’s Lauren desperately shutting off her teacher’s suggestions of a backup plan in case she doesn’t get into Northside or Ayvar-Perez’s hilarious but aggravating presentation on World War II that conflates the plots of several different Hollywood treatments (from “Saving Private Ryan” to “Schindler’s List”), we see these kids as more than talking points.
But then the creators of “Forgotten Future” pull back from their stories and show a scene where a disorganized consultant (Cardenas) tries to explain Common Core to the teachers. Or we get a quick-and-dirty history lesson on public education that, while stuffed with factoids, doesn’t connect emotionally with the strife of the kids, parents and teachers we see onstage. The adults, even the teachers, come off as less dimensional than the kids. (In the case of Swift’s glad-handing alderman, it leads to a funny moment when Hall tells him, “My mom says the alderman is a bagman for the mayor.”)
The focus on the kids is what makes this piece valuable and what it needs to do more often. I think the creators know that too. The opening — a rally to save the now-closed public schools — ends with a very self-aware moment in which the kids try to bring up their stories and are shouted down by adults talking about them, rather than to them.
Education battles are being waged for and around people who themselves can’t vote or change the underlying social circumstances proscribing their educational options. (Which is why Season 4 of “The Wire,” which followed a group of kids in a beleaguered urban school, is so heartbreaking.) Admirably, “Forgotten Future” takes that into account, but as of yet it hasn’t managed to foreground those emotionally riveting stories over the familiar adult viewpoints and gripes.
When: Through Oct. 26
Where: Collaboraction, Flat Iron Arts Building, 1579 N. Milwaukee Ave.
Running time: 90 minutes
Tickets: $30 at 312-226-9633 or collaboraction.org