p l ayw s edu ON STAGE AND OFF
2015/2016 Season
January 29 - february 28, 2016
P H I L A D E L P H I A T H E AT R E CO M PA N Y at the
“
I’m a Chicago f***ing teacher; nothing shocks me. Two hundred seniors graduated last year, Vice... There are twenty computers - for three thousand kids. Leaks. Holes. Even the paints trying to run away from this place, Vice, even the paint.
- Pam Morse Exit Strategy
Exit Strategy is “a funny and searing piece that emotionally explores how differently a group of teachers, an assistant principal and a student all react when they’re given the news that their school, a fictional Tumbleton High located on Chicago’s South Side, will be given one final school year.” - Windy City Times
“With Exit Strategy, people say, ‘Oh, this is about the Chicago Public Schools system.’ I don’t think it’s about that. It’s about a group of very diverse people learning how to go on when they’re told that they shouldn’t. You can apply that to the public school system, but people who have nothing to do with CPS can see that show and get something bigger out of it.” - Ike Holter, The People Issue
“‘Whatever side people were on in reality, they all seemed to come out of the play seeing themselves as the heroes but having more respect for people on the other side from them,’ Holter said in a recent interview. ‘I think it felt both real and a little bit fantastical to a lot of those who came. Most of all, I wanted to give voice to all sides of the story: teachers, kids, administrators. You know, we don’t hear very much from administrators.’” - Chris Jones, Chicago Tribune “I saw a production of Sweeney Todd at the Guthrie when I was ten/eleven, and that, like, made me go into theater. I saw it on the night that all the power went out, so they used the work lights—and that’s a tech-heavy show. Sets were changed in front of you. Seeing it bare like that made me fill in all the rest. I prefer to go as low-tech as possible without being dime-store.” – Ike Holter, The People Issue
IkeHolter
Michael Cullen NY Stage: King Liz (Second Stage Theater), Finks (Ensemble Studio Theater), Bug (Barrow Street TheaterObie Award), Len, Asleep in Vinyl (Second Stage Theater), Cobb (Lucille Lortel Theater - Drama Desk Award, Best Ensemble), Dark Matters (Rattlestick Theater), One Shot, One Kill (Primary Stages), The Intelligent Design of Jenny Chow (Atlantic Theater), Bus Stop (Circle In The Square). Regional Theater: Actors Theater of Louisville - Humana Festival, Denver Stage, Dallas Theater Center, Penguin Theater, Buffalo Studio Arena, The English Theater of Frankfurt, Germany. TV : Law & Order, Law & Order: Criminal Intent, Law & Order: SVU, Life On Mars, A Gifted Man, Ed, Third Watch, NY Undercover, Flesh and Bone, The Black List. Film: The Place Beyond The Pines, Margot At The Wedding, Dead Man Walking, Clockers, Malcolm X.
Aimé Donna Kelly Off Broadway: Witch in Macbeth (Epic Theatre Ensemble). Regional: Jory in Disgraced (Philadelphia Theatre Company); Lady Macduff/ Weird Sister in Macbeth (Arden Theatre Company); Petrushka in Moon Man Walk (Oribiter 3); Noxolo in The Dangerous House of Pretty Mbane (Barrymore Award nominee - Best Actress), Black Woman in We are Proud to Present… (InterAct Theatre Company); This is the week that is (1812 Productions); Cleopatra in unsex me Here (Theatre 4the People); Sharon in We are Bandits (Applied Mechanics); Georgia in The Exonerated (Delaware Theatre Company). BFA: University of the Arts. This is her second time at PTC this season. She is so excited to be back, working on this fabulous and important play with this amazing group of talented artists!
Rey Lucas is so happy to be making his Philadelphia Theatre Company debut! Theatre: The Roundabout Theatre Company, The Public Theatre, Playwrights Horizons, INTAR Theatre, The Goodman Theatre, Victory Gardens, Arena Stage, Long Wharf Theatre, Yale Repertory Theatre, The Eugene O’Neill Theatre Center, The Williamstown Theatre Festival, The Alliance Theatre, and The Denver Center Theatre Company. Television: The Path (upcoming), Netflix’s Orange Is the New Black (upcoming), Blue Bloods, Believe, American Odyssey, The Mysteries of Laura, The Blacklist, The Following, Golden Boy, Elementary, Person of Interest, Weeds, Army Wives, Law & Order, and 100 Centre Street. Film: Keep in Touch (upcoming), About Alex, Allegiance, On the Job Training, and The Doghouse. B.A.: Wesleyan University, CT. M.F.A.: The Yale School of Drama. www.reylucas.com.
Deirdre Madigan is delighted to be back at PTC were she was seen as Sonia in Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike (Barrymore Nominated). Broadway: A Delicate Balance, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, After the Night, and The Music. Off-Broadway: Barbra’s Wedding and Major Crimes. Regional Theatre: Bucks County Playhouse, Westport Country Playhouse, Two River Theatre, Merrimack Repertory Theatre, Denver Center, Intiman, Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, George Street Theatre, Repertory Theatre of St. Louis, Virginia Stage, and Pioneer Theatre. Television: Elementary, The Good Wife, Law & Order, and Law & Order: Criminal Intent.
Christina Nieves Theatrical credits include: The House on Mango Street (Steppenwolf Theatre), El Nogalar, The Sins of Sor Juana (Goodman Theatre), West Side Story, Les Miserables (Drury Lane), In The Heights (Paramount Theatre), A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Chicago Shakespeare Theatre), Dee Snider’s Rock & Roll Christmas Tale (Broadway Playhouse), Song for the Disappeared (Passage Theatre), Depraved New World (Second City), Welcome to Arroyo’s (American Theatre Company), Romeo & Juliet (Apollo Theater), All My Sons (Cardinal Stage), Lunaticas & S-E-X-OH! (Teatro Luna). Christina is an ensemble member with Teatro Vista and a graduate of The Theatre School at DePaul University. Endless gratitude to her family and her love, J., for their endless support, and many thanks to Mr. Stadelmeyer for being the best music teacher ever. www. christina-nieves.com Brandon J. Pierce Regional: Metamorphoses, Charlotte’s Web (Arden Theatre Company); Hands Up (Flashpoint Theatre Company); Dutch Masters (Azuka Theatre); Milk Like Sugar (Simpatico Theatre Project); Sunjata Kamalenya (Experiential Theatre Company); Fair Maid of the West (Philadelphia Artists’ Collective); Romeo and Juliet, Comedy of Errors (Shakespeare Theatre of NJ); The Winter’s Tale, Henry IV (Shakespeare in Clark Park); Macbeth (Revolution Shakespeare) BFA: University of the Arts. Love to Mom and Dad. Ryan Spahn This is Ryan’s Philadelphia Theatre Company debut. He recently graduated from the acting program at The Juilliard School where he wrote, produced and starred in He’s Way More Famous Than You, Grantham & Rose, and Woven. Ryan co-created and starred in the digital comedy series What’s Your Emergency (Stage17.tv). Off Broadway: Gloria (Vineyard Theatre). Regional: Actor’s Theatre of Louisville, Martha’s Vineyard Playhouse, Berkshire Theatre Group. Ryan was an LA Weekly Award winner for his performance in Stupid Kids (Celebration Theatre). TV/Film: Ugly Betty, Star Trek: Voyager, Tanner on Tanner and David Letterman.
In December of 2012, Philadelphia announced what was then the largest single-year closing of public schools in the nation. A total of 37 schools, or fifteen percent, were slated for closure. Chicago followed less than a year later with the decision to close 50 schools.
April 2012
The District releases a consultant report recommending closure of 64 schools over five years as a matter of financial survival.
November 2012
Late Dece 2012
Invoking its special, state-granted powers, the School Reform Commission waives the state requirement that it hold hearings on individual school closings three months before a final decision.
The Dist four com meeting and hea on the p at some schools counterp Philadel Advocat Schools alternati
Fall 2012
The District holds seven community meetings to seek general feedback about more planned closings. More than 500 people participate, answering questions regarding such topics as school colocation, K-8 schools vs. middle schools, and the need for walkable options.
Philadelphia’s
December 13, 2012
Summer 2012
Drew, Harrison, Levering, FitzSimons, High School for Business, and the high school at Rhodes are closed.
Schoo
October 2012
ACTION United files a civil rights complaint against the District alleging that the schools closed in 2012 served a disproportionately high percentage of Black students.
Superintendent William Hite announces the plan to close or relocate 44 schools by September, 2013; 37 buildings will close. In addition, 23 schools will change grade configurations; four will become elementary schools. Some 60 schools will receive students displaced by closings.
e ember 2
trict holds mmunity gs to explain r testimony plan. Groups targeted present proposals. The lphia Coalition ting for Public releases an ive plan.
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March 4, 2015
Superintendent William Hit releases his Action Plan 3.0 calling form administrative reorganization of schools and a focus on “equity” designed to concentrate a higher share of available funds in neighborhood schools.
Feb. 21-23, 2013
The SRC schedules individual hearings for each school from 5 to 10 p.m. Thursday and from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Friday and Saturday. The schedule leaves an average of about 30 minutes for discussion of each of the 44 affected schools.
Closure
August 31, 2013 Teacher’s union contract expires.
Timeline
January 2013
The District holds nine more community meetings, drawing large crowds and heated opposition. Presentations detail the reasons for each school decision. Meetings scheduled for February are cancelled; officials plan to hold roundtable discussions with individual school communities instead. Enon Tabernacle Baptist Church, with the District’s approval, holds meetings at the 37 schools slated to close. Enon plans to present a complete report to Hite and the SRC.
January 4, 2016
June 7, 2013
District lays off 3,783 employees.
March 7, 2013
Mayor Jim Kenney highlight community schools as a goal in his inaugural address “Over the last year, I articulated a lot of different ways that I believe our administration can serve the city: expanded pre-k, stronger neighborhood commercial corridors, community schools, community policing. And while those policies cover a wide range of issues, they all come from one fundamental truth: government functions properly when it’s accessible and accountable to the people.”
The SRC votes to close 23 schools, 10% of the city’s total number of public schools.
“Research has shown that students' achievement improved only if they moved to a substantially higherperforming school than the one they left. The study indicated there simply weren't enough available seats for displaced students in higher-rated schools.” - Juan Perez, Jr. Chicago Tribune referencing the University of Chicago’s Report on School Closings, January 2015.
“
In Their Own Words:
Those kids will get transferred. Maybe they don’t go, maybe they don’t like it that’s all their choice. But if they want it, they can take it. - Arnold Reese, Exit Strategy
what happens to the people “But as I realized when I visited the ghost of Durham, local schools also fulfill a smaller, human-scale function: They orient us to our own histories, anchors of continuity in the places where we were from. Schools are where young people first learn how to interact with their communities in official and personal capacities, and offer a touchstone to reconnect with way down the line. Our schools are signposts in the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves and our communities.” “You know that the well-being of our communities is inextricably linked with local schools, so the discussions surrounding their closing are not just operational or financial, but also deeply personal and highly-charged.” - Kate Shaw, Executive Director for Research For Action
Life Inspires Art:
Photo: Pepon Osorio’s “reform” is a multi-media installation in a classroom at Tyler School of Art at Temple University. It is a memorial to Fairhill School which was closed in 2013. It includes video, poems and artwork by former students about the emotional effects of the school’s closing.
“When I found out that the school where I taught would be closing, I was visiting my father in Florida for spring break, and I locked myself in the bedroom and cried like a little kid. I started replaying life there in my head, over and over, like a sappy montage in a bad movie. Here's me walking down the hallway for the first time, on my way to meet the principal for a job interview. Here's Nathan, staying in my classroom after hours to write and illustrate a story about the Great Depression. Here's Patricia standing proudly in front of the whole school and perfectly reciting her lines as Lady Capulet, despite her hearing impairment and speech impediment. Here's the staff meeting where we find out that Nashae has cancer, and strategize about how we're going to coordinate hospital visits, frozen dinners, and rides home for her sister. Here's Omari connecting a circuit for the first time, and Sierra lovingly feeding Peanut, the gecko that was our class pet. Here is our school." - Eve Ewing, former teacher, sociologist
“Nine-year-old Asean Johnson gets it. The Chicago student-activist told a reporter, ‘I think its pretty bad. [Chicago Public Schools] do not like us. If they send us behind a gang territory where the kids don't like us, what do you think it's going to be? Violence or safety? They're saying they're trying to create safety for the kids, but you're just sending them in danger.’” - Shaun Ossei-Owusu, Huffington Post
“Often the most effective arguments were waged not by the loudest or most seasoned activists, but by students. Young students argued how closing their school would be akin to separating them from their family. Others said that the District’s decision to shutter schools would result in ‘post-school closure trauma.’ One 7th grade student at Beeber who spoke at the community meetings and at the formal SRC hearing, demurred, ‘think about the little people’ in making her arguments against sending 7th and 8th graders over to Overbrook High School.” - Perspectives on Urban Education, UPenn Graduate School of Education
Photo: Video installations are surrounded by things that reflect the personalities of the Fairhill students. (Photos credited to Kimberly Paynter/ WHYY)
“It’s an opportunity to reflect and to be able to understand education and to move education to a higher priority. For the students, it is an opportunity to understand that everything happened for a reason, and there are social and political implications to those decisions.” - Pepon Osorio
A New Mayor, A New Plan
The Concept
Community Schools
Do more than just teach kids in schools.
"’If you look at every department in the city, they have some service to offer our citizens, which could be programmed through the school-based setting,’ Kenney said. ‘It can make schools more of a center in the community.’ Mayor Michael Kenney has pledged to establish 25 Community Schools in Philadelphia over the next four years.”
Meet their basic needs by bringing social, health, and other services into a school as a way to better reach families and allow educators to focus solely on instruction. The schools primarily serve students but also offer resources to families and everyone living in the surrounding neighborhood. "Schools can't do everything," said Julie Doppler, Cincinnati Public Schools' community Schools Initiative point person. "Kids fall through the cracks, but community partners pick them up. This removes the barriers kids are facing in the classroom."
(Philadelphia Inquirer, November 2015)
Case Study Cincinnati, Ohio Cincinnati's Community Learning Centers Initiative started in 2001 when the Board of Education adopted a vision for a district-wide redevelopment of all schools as centers of their community. A $1 billion Facilities Master Plan was approved by the voters in 2002 with a promise that each school would be a community learning center. The foundational element of the initiative is the engagement of each school and its surrounding neighborhood in the planning, implementation and ongoing governance of its community learning centers. Another key principle is that all partnerships must be financially self-sustaining without dependence upon the school budget. Currently 34 of the district’s 55 schools have been renovated into community learning centers.
OneSight Vision Center at Oyler School, a “community learning center” in Cincinnati. (Andrew Spear, The New York Times)
Measuring Success Cincinnati has made some of the greatest gains in test scores in Ohio in recent years, even though it lags behind state averages. In 2012, 48 percent of seventh graders from low-income backgrounds at the schools, which adopted the model in 2006, passed state exams in reading, according to a New York Times analysis of state testing data. Across Ohio, 80 percent of students passed the exams; among poor children statewide, the average was 68 percent. In Cincinnati, teachers and principals enthusiastically endorsed the model, calling it an effective way to mitigate the effects of poverty in the classroom. “If you tell me a kid comes to school hungry and we feed them, I don’t need a database to tell me that’s a good thing,” said Michael Mulgrew, president of the teachers’ union.
Across the Country • • • •
Chicago now has 150+ community schools New York City has100+ Portland, OR has 55 SUN (Schools Uniting Neighborhood) Schools Lincoln, NE has 25 community schools
“We make something so big, so sudden, and so incredible that they beg us to put this situation into perspective. We don’t stop until we make the news - we keep going until they catch up to us...For once, let’s let them catch up to us.” - RICKY HUBBLE, Exit Strategy
In 1995, a group of high school students came together to identify problems in their schools and strategize ways to solve them. Twenty years later, the dream of a few high school students has become a transformative organization, building the power of young people in the city of Philadelphia. On Feb. 14, 2012, Pennsylvania public school students, parents and teachers converged at the Capitol Rotunda to denounce Gov. Corbett's education calls and demand better schools.
In 2015, the Philly Student Union: • • • •
Built new organizing, media, and arts skills in weekly chapter and citywide meetings, radio and newsletter programs, BAYM: Building a Youth Movement summer program, and the brand-new Documentary Comics Workshop; Started a new high school chapter at Science Leadership Academy, and launched a new antistandardized testing campaign, More Than A Test; Organized against a new jail in Philadelphia, forming the #No215Jail Coalition with Decarcerate PA, 1 Love Movement, and YASP, and succeeding in getting Councilman Bobby Henon to withdraw the bill to buy land for a new jail; Planned, participated in, and delivered speeches at numerous rallies and actions, including marches to Reclaim MLK Day, to save Huey Elementary School, to protest police attacks on Black lives, and to demand Comcast pay their fair share;
In December 2013, parents, students, and teachers march on Broad Street to demand an end to "corporate reform" policies.
This Student Study Guide has been generously funded by the Victory Foundation Philadelphia Theatre Company gratefully acknowledges the following for their underwriting support of Education: Jon and Linda Chorney Hamilton Family Foundation Lida Foundation – David and Linda Glickstein PECO – TheatreACCESS presenting sponsor Victory Foundation and supporters of PTC’s Annual Gala where all proceeds benefit PTC Education Programs
To learn more about our programming in schools and at the theatre, check us out on the web at philadelphiatheatrecompany.org or call our Education Department at 215.985.1400 x122
Theatre Etiquette Some things to keep in mind when taking in a play at a theatre: • • • • • •
Turn off and put away all electronic devices prior to entering the theatre. Taking photographs and video recording in the theatre is prohibited. Do not place your feet on the seat in front of you. The actors onstage can see and hear the audience just as well as the audience can see and hear them; Please refrain from talking or moving around during the performance as it can be distracting to the actors as well as to other audience members. Fee free to respond to the action of the play through appropriate laughter and applause. The actors enjoy this type of communication from the audience. Have fun! Attending theatre should be an enjoyable experience.
PLAYWISEDU is a publication of Philadelphia Theatre Company’s Education Department. Each issue explores themes, ideas, and questions related to a PTC production. It is designed to enrich the experience of our younger audiences and support the mission of our Education Programming. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, including mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording, or other means,without the prior written permission of Philadelphia Theatre Company. Philadelphia Theatre Company © 2016