Sat. Dec. 22 & Sun. Dec. 23

The title of Nilaja Sun's one-woman play "No Child ..." is, of course, drawn from that infamous Bush pledge about education. Many people have a bitter laugh about that one. But For nine years, Sun put some real weight into the concept, by teaching acting classes in the Bronx - having the kids put on plays. In 2006, she wrote and performed a piece about her experiences and put on a play she thought she might do for a month. She ended up doing it Off-Broadway for nearly a year - it won multiple awards - and she's now taken it to the American Repertory Theatre's Loeb Drama Center for a run that goes through Sunday Dec. 23. There are 17 characters she creates. She herself, of course, is one, but there's also the narrator-janitor ("I love old people," she told us after the play) who has seen the school evolve (or maybe devolve) over the years. A lot of come and go. A lot of non-learning. It's Malcolm X High School when the play starts; in the future it will be named after Tupac Shakur. As he sweeps the halls - its a bare stage with just a few plastic chairs scattered about - he fills us in on the reality and explains this newcomer, Ms. Sun, who will give us "a play within a play withn a play" and that she likes to call herself a "teacher-artiste - so people know she does something else with her time."

What Sun is trying to do in the play is teach the disinterested, undernourished black and Hispanic kids to learn and put on an Australian play called "Our Country's Good," that deals with convicts who try to rise above their plight. See the connection? One of the students figures it out. "'Cause we treated like convicts every day?" he says. She explains how convicts are expected to fail by the rest of society, just as society expects many of the kids at Malcolm X to end up failures, behind bars. She'd like to make that not happen. The 65-minute play is a whirlwind and Sun jumps among the characters effortlessly - she's performed this more than 460 times - and does it without the showiness seen in some one-actor productions. It's a play not without humor or conflict. At one point, Sun is discouraged by her actors seeming lack of interest and threatens to quit. But, really, despite their apparent attitude they have been learning their lines and do want to do the play. "Most of us just being assholes," explains Jerome. "Oops, bad thespians." We don't see them perform that much of the play, per se, just a bit. We hear afterwards that it's been a succcess despite the fact that "lines have been fumbled and entrances missed." The result, Sun says, is "We will no longer feel like despised prisoners or jailors." It's inspiring in a street-smart fashion, not mawkish.
At the small gathering after press night, Sun chatted a bit. "It's about channeling," she said, of how she jumps from character to character. ""My head is not there, it's my heart. I have an animal spirit (a zebra_ now that will cool me down when things get too hot. I don't know why, but I don't mess up the lines in the show." Whatever works, we say. We asked Sun about Red Bull - the very popular high-energy drink among kids. In the play, her character, a struggling actor, accepts a Red Bull commercial. True to life? "No God, no," says Sun. Would I say yes to a Red Bull commcerial? No. Kids drink way too much Red Bull. They do it at 8 a.m. and crash at 11." Tickets $79 - $39. Final shows. This Thursday-Sunday, with that final day's matinee  at 2. Thursday through Saturday nights at 8.

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