IT'S A one-second trip from Cambridge to the Bronx at the American Repertory Theatre, where Nilaja Sun's one-woman play, "No Child," tells a story about a visiting artist who tries to turn a class of unruly students at Malcolm X High School into "thespians" who put on a play about putting on a play.
Such stories about how the show must go on are as familiar as "Kiss Me Kate." What's different is the political season.
"No Child" takes on the federal No Child Left Behind law, and the play slaps the law across the face.
It's common to debate educational policy, to conclude that a law is generally good or bad. But Sun does a different and engaging thing: She requires policy to stand up for itself onstage - home of humanities' great rages and hopes.
The result is a theatrical complaint that No Child Left Behind is too small to matter to teenagers who face poverty, crime, abuse, crumbling schools, overwhelmed teachers, missing parents, and public indifference.
As Sun walks and talks through a dozen roles - teachers, students, the school custodian - she is acting out a tacit critique: If all the world's a stage, then Congress is a theater where there's a glaring lack of imagination. It's where laws get cooked up based on partial versions of life, such as the Bronx-less reality of No Child Left Behind - a law that struggles to help those most in need, one that seems, in the fictional halls of Malcolm X High, like little more than bad theater.
Sun is an informed critic. A Catholic school graduate, she has spent nearly a decade as a visiting artist in New York City's public schools. She wrote the play on commission for the New York State Council on the Arts and the Epic Theatre Ensemble, a New York City nonprofit that advocates the idea that "plays are ideally suited for helping students explore the connection between politics and their personal lives."
Playing a character allows an actor to think and say new things about life - or about federal law. Can't afford a media campaign or a wired lobbyist? Put on a play that asks the question: Can't a 10th-grader just get a script? Aren't high school productions a powerful way to teach reading, critical thinking, acting, focus, teamwork, and discipline? Shouldn't all students have the experience of putting on a show, of exceeding their own expectations, of basking in stage lights and applause?
No Child Left Behind is up for reauthorization now. The debate over the law's future is playing out in the usual settings, in Congress, in the news, in living rooms. The play "No Child" will keep the debate onstage at the ART through Dec. 23. And it deserves credit for asking this about education reform: What would Shakespeare do?
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