A Public Education

 

 

 

 

 

A Public Education
Out of Box Theatre
through May 19, 2019

Playwright Jeff Talbott spent hundreds of hours researching the teaching environment in our schools, and he interviewed many teachers as he crafted this work. Zip Rampy directs a cast of six players as they meet up in the break room at the high school.

Shaun Maclean plays a new math teacher who has problems interacting with adults as well as children. He seems to want to analyze everything in mathematical terms. But that’s not always a good sine. His cohort is Doug McGowan (Bob Smith) who sees things from a different perspective, albeit he may not have all the answers. For it seems that the students are tweeting as if they were politicians, and the trash they are posting is not what their teachers might wish to deal with. Duh! I was once a teacher, and very thankful that Facebook, Instagram and all that stuff with hashtags (whatever that is derived from) didn’t exist in olden days.

We meet only one student, Tommy (Zach Kuebler), who is a real piece of work. I would have sent him to detention. But, he remembers all his lines, and knows how to send text messages.

The Principal lady is played by Mia Kristin Smith, and she is fighting hard to inject some amount of sanity into the situation, although that ain’t so easy to do. A lot of stresses come out quite angrily and the yelling sounds pretty real. The two teachers are played by Bryn Striepe and Amanda Cucher.

This is an interesting work that makes one want to think about how we run schools in these days. For there are no secrets in this word. That doesn’t mean that everything you read or hear might be true; for we all have seen the news in the past months. Will things change anytime soon? Not unless all networking is done away with.

Out Of Box is locate on Cobb Parkway south of The Big Chicken, and there is free parking and plenty of beaneries nearby. More info and tickets at OutOfBoxTheatre.com