One actress, one troubled school full of characters

Writer and actress Nilaja Sun based her one-woman show, "No Child...," on her experiences as a "teaching artist" in New York's public schools. (Tasos Katopodis / Getty Images for the Boston Globe)

Sitting in an apartment in Chicago last week, writer and actor Nilaja Sun was indulging in the silence of what she called her "creative monastery." The native New Yorker's voice was raspy and growing hoarse. Her wisp of a body felt a bit achy, she said. In just a few hours Sun, 33, was set to hit the stage for the eighth day in a row. There would be few props and no costume changes, only her expressive posture and prose as she morphed into more than a dozen characters of different ethnicities and ages in her whirlwind one-woman show "No Child . . .," which comes to the American Repertory Theatre on Friday.

Playing beleaguered teachers, riotous students, rude security guards, and one tired old janitor who watches over them all, Sun draws from her own experiences as a theater "teaching artist" in the New York City public schools to capture the troubled spirit of the fictional Malcolm X High School in the Bronx, home to "two metal detecting machines, five school guards, and two armed New York City police officers." Playing herself, she tries to get an oversize class of the so-called worst students in the school to memorize and perform "Our Country's Good," a drama set in 1788 about convicts in the Australian penal system trying to put on a play.

"It's written by a woman named Timberlake Wertenbaker," says the teaching artist in "No Child . . ."

"Yo, Justin Timberlake done wrote himself a play. 'Wanna rock you body . . .' " responds Brian, a disinterested student.

The parallels between Australian convicts and today's students, however unfortunate, were hard to resist, Sun said by phone, politely apologizing for the strain in her voice.

"I really wanted to tap into the souls of these students," she explained. "So many kids - and teachers - walk through the metal detectors everyday. You can't help but feel very much like a prisoner, or someone on the path of doing something criminal."

Sun, who has been on tour with "No Child . . ." for more than a year, said that when she was commissioned by the New York State Council of the Arts and Manhattan's Epic Theatre Ensemble to write a show about education, she didn't conceive it as a one-woman piece. She certainly didn't imagine it would become an off-Broadway success.

"This is not what I planned when I wrote it," she said with a laugh, insisting that she'd intended to perform it for just four weeks. "But I thought, hey, maybe I can pull this one off if I get a real good director. I didn't realize how challenging the piece was to do by myself."

The script for the play, whose title refers to President Bush's No Child Left Behind law, presents a familiar formula: Young, inexperienced, idealistic teacher enters a classroom filled with hardened and angry students. Feeling beat up and defeated, teacher almost throws in the towel, yet somehow manages to inspire a glimmer of hope inside the souls of those hardest to reach. Think Sidney Poitier in 1967's "To Sir With Love," James Belushi in 1987's "The Principal," Michelle Pfeiffer in 1995's "Dangerous Minds."

"It's practically a genre," said Sun's director, Hal Brooks, by phone. "You've seen this in many movies before. Will they do the show in the end? Or won't they?"

It's Sun's riveting performance and humor, Brooks said, that makes "No Child . . ." work. "There is something really magical about what she does," he said. "There is something very hypnotic about the way she moves . . . hooking into characters with a minimal amount of movement."

Sun has won critical acclaim for previous solo performances such as "Blues for a Gray Sun," an original play about the tragic death of writer/actor Spalding Gray. She's appeared in nearly two dozen off-Broadway shows with Epic Theatre, including "Pieces of the Throne," "Einstein's Gift," and "Time and the Conways," while participating as an associate teacher in Epic's school programs getting students to study classic plays and eventually perform them onstage.

Given her experience, writing and performing "No Child . . ." seemed like a natural. But first there was some work to do, Brooks explained. Sun had to whittle down her original script, which called for a cast that included 32 students in a classroom, to eight kids. Brooks evoked the 1975 television hit "Welcome Back Kotter": "You know, it's a classroom full of sweathogs, but only four of them speak," he said with a chuckle.

Next, Brooks said, each character had to carry a very distinct pose. The mouthy Shodrika, for example, cocks her elbow and sticks out her hip while fingering through her hair. Jose, who starts off "mad bored," picks at his shirt the way Al Pacino does in "Scarface," Brooks said, and Jerome, the leader of the pack, is immediately identified by the way he sits with his arms and legs open, ready to challenge his teachers as well as theater audiences. But sharpening the characters' distinct poses and voices was just the beginning.

"It wasn't running across the stage putting on a scarf and hat," Brooks said. "It's not simply just getting into a pose. It's heightening that moment of transition . . . snapping into that position." And Sun makes it all look easy, he said.

The only child of African-American and Puerto Rican parents, raised in part by an Italian stepfather, Sun first passed through the gauntlet of school security in 1998 when she was with the National Shakespeare Company, performing "Romeo and Juliet" in various New York high schools and working with students.

The feeling of walking into a city school outfitted with armed guards for the first time? "Uneasy," she said. "At first it puts you on edge. You think, 'What are we getting protected from? What are we protecting?' "

Growing up on Manhattan's Lower East Side, Sun had attended Catholic schools before studying theater at Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, Penn. It is one of many personal experiences she isn't afraid to poke fun at in her show.

"Having gone to Catholic school for 13 years, I didn't even know I was black until college," the character of the teaching artist says, roaring with laughter.

In reality, seeing what students experience up close - the detachment from society, the revolving door of overextended teachers, the lack of discipline and goals - was a shock, she said. It was the culture of lowered expectations that really twisted her insides. Breaking through students' emotional armor, getting them to embrace their talents and potential, took a great deal of energy and time, Sun said.

"I was really concerned about the kids," she explained. "Trying things like getting them to sit still for five minutes was very hard. There were a lot of attention issues. It was very challenging to teach anything. I was really, really concerned for the kids and their futures, and how they would amount to anything if they can't sit still for five minutes."

Even as Sun steps into the spotlight, she remains a teaching artist. With Epic Theatre, she has taken her work into New York classrooms feeling the effects of No Child Left Behind. The law, enacted in 2003, emphasizes standardized testing, forcing many public schools to strip arts from their curricula in order to focus on exams.

"One of the great things [about arts education] is that it gets these students out of the neighborhoods," Sun said. "It opens their souls up, and they become well-rounded individuals."

During her tour of "No Child . . ." Sun also takes the time to visit schools, exposing students to theater and giving them a chance to ask questions. In the Boston area, Sun plans to visit Cambridge Rindge and Latin School and Fenway High School, among others.

Almost as gratifying as reaching out to students are the responses she's received from audience members who are mostly far removed from the heart-wrenching struggles of public school students, parents, and teachers, Sun said. In essence, they seem to appreciate the delivery of such bad news.

"They feel really thankful that I brought them into this world," Sun said. "It feels like there is a greater empathy for one another. Some never walked into a public school before, and now they feel for the students. Many people come up to me and say, 'Wow, you must be so tired.' I just tell them that this is what teachers do every day."