Photo Credit: Timothy Moder
Any workplace can be complicated. When that workplace also happens to involve the insanely intricate political process of teaching students, things can be all the more complicated. Next Act Theatre explores the politics of public school in its latest online offering: Joe Zarrow’s Principal Principle. Marti Gobel directs a talented ensemble including Milwaukee theater veterans and rising talents who deftly explore the very, very difficult world of public school teaching. In less than two hours, the play delivers one year in the life of four teachers and the school system they serve.
A deeply engaging April Paul plays Kay Josephs: a young English teacher eager to get to work at a Chicago public highschool. She’s joining a group of three teachers with a diversity of different perspectives. Flora Coker shows impressive nuance as a seasoned teacher who is very close to retirement. Charismatic Ericka Wade plays to her strengths as a calmly dominant force in the office. She’s the head of a department that’s in a constant state of change. Malaina Moore is poised as the aggressively progressive, young teacher who is fiercely opposed to the new curriculum that seems to be settling-in. Megan Kim serves as a fierce counterpoint to the rest of the cast as the bureaucrat who is driving the change, driving division within the department.
Thanks to Gobel’s sharp directing, Principal Principle feels every bit as present and engaging as live theater. Everyone in the cast is looking in different directions for perfection. The clash between varying perspectives on teaching comes across with remarkably vivid intensity. Everyone is at odds with everyone else in the cast in some way. There aren’t any easy answers, but everyone seems to be working together. A sophisticated ensemble delivers on a very complex working relationship in another work of considerable depth by Next Act.
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Next Act Theatre’s production of Principal Principle continues through March 7 online. For tickets and more call 414-278-0765 or visit nextact.org.
