'School Play' makes funding crisis personal

In 2013, Arden Kass was one of about 20 Philadelphia parents who traveled to Harrisburg to deliver 4,000 letters by schoolchildren pleading to restore education funding.

It didn't go well.

"The mothers were shocked at how callous the environment was, and, when they went to deliver these extraordinary words of children, how little currency they had," said Donna Cooper, executive director of Public Citizens for Children and Youth (PCCY), which helped with logistics. "Some of the women became activists on education as a result of that. Arden's not an activist, though: She's an artist."

So, Arden Kass - a playwright from Graduate Hospital - set about creating a play about school funding, that, in the tradition of The Laramie Project and The Vagina Monologues, would use interviews from stakeholders to turn a political issue into a personal one.

The resulting work, School Play - a collage of interviews with 100 students, teachers and politicians from 30 communities across Pennsylvania - premieres at the National Constitution Center tonight and Thursday. Then, the script, promotional materials and an advocacy tool kit, will be posted online at www.pccy.org/tools for theater groups, school drama clubs and anyone who cares about the issue to download for free and perform.

PCCY's goal is 20 performances statewide by June.

Kass, whose daughter graduated from Central High School in 2012 and whose son attends Science Leadership Academy, said the budget cuts hit home for her when she heard that her son would be learning Spanish from Rosetta Stone.

"At the same time, I had a couple conversations with people in social situations who said things like, 'If they gave more money to those kids in the city schools, you think they'd get anything out of it anyway?' I said, 'You mean like my son - like having a teacher in the room with him? I think so.'"

So, she said, "I got the idea that the only way to make people understand what this is all about is theater. Nothing else moves people in such an intellectual and emotional way."

Cooper, at PCCY, set about raising funds for the play last year, bringing in $100,000.

Kass, who's written several A&E Biography scripts and scrapped her work on a musical comedy to focus on School Play, was joined by P. Seth Bauer, a playwright and University of the Arts theater professor, as a cowriter; Edward Sobel, head of playwriting at Temple University and a frequent director with the Arden Theatre, signed on as director.

They began interviews last September, and by late March had distilled 200 hours of material into a 70-minute play.

On a Sunday afternoon, the team gathered in a rented dance studio on South Street for a run-through. A cast of five professional actors would play 35 roles, transitioning from student to parent to Education Secretary with a few strides across the stage.

Kass's daughter, Isabella, home from Brown University on break, was there to watch. She said it's tough to hear these stories, and to visit her alma mater, Central, where the situation has worsened considerably. She'd recently stopped by the art studios, which she recalled once abuzz with students working on projects. This time, they were empty, except for a sign that read, "Sorry, we have no art supplies."

Such deprivations, minor and major, punctuate the play: Broken bathrooms and heating systems, a science textbook that still pronounces, "We hope to land a man on the moon someday."

There are the familiar stories about life-changing teachers: The ones who inspire kids, who set them on a new path, who provide hats and coats when parents cannot. And there are stories about heartbreaking students. "I still frequently write to students who are in prison and will be in prison for a very long time," one teacher is quoted as saying.

Then there are the more nuanced tales: The superintendent who had to choose between cutting reading specialists or art and music. When he tried to cut the arts, the community protested, even vandalizing his home. He fired the reading staff, instead. "Now, our schools are painted as failing," he concluded.

These stories may sound familiar after years of crisis in Philadelphia, but they come from all over the state.

The superintendent of Johnstown, a hard-hit rust belt community, recounted children who show up on the bus the first day, unregistered and unprepared. "We spend days sometimes looking for the identity of an impoverished child," he added.

The play is strung together from verbatim quotes, and actors can access audio from interviews to borrow even more detail.

"We wanted all the incomplete sentences, all the run-ons and tics, and the things that make them sound like human beings, preserved," Bauer said.

The result is a conversation that Sobel said dives far deeper than education debates normally go.

"There's a tension in American life between individualism and community," he said, "and you can see that tension playing out in the arguments about public education."

Bauer, whose son is in special-education at Jenks Elementary, in the Philadelphia School District, said it can feel like a matter of choosing between his ideals - of staying put and helping improve the urban school system - and doing the best he can by his child, and moving to the suburbs.

"What's nefarious about this is that what people are guilty of is loving their children," he said. "Everyone is just trying to do the best they can for their kid. But, sometimes, that means taking resources away from poor children."

Now, Cooper is reaching out to theater companies, civic groups, schools and religious congregations to bring School Play to their communities.

Anyone who wants to pick it up could perform a scene, a 20-minute mini-play, or the entire work. "Do it in your church, your library, the parking lot outside Walmart!" Kass said.

Participants also are invited to add their own interviews and scenes.

Cooper is hoping that, in doing so, they could change the tone of the conversation around public education.

Currently, perhaps because this problem seems intractable, it seems like there's ever more fatigue, she said.

But, she added, school districts' needs remain urgent, even now that Gov. Wolf has proposed budget increases and a commission is meeting to make recommendations for a school-funding formula.

Budget increases, she said, always seem to move forward begrudgingly.

"What we're hoping to do with this play is build that collective sense of urgency, so we go from begrudging to inspired."

School Play

 7:30 p.m. Wednesday and Thursday at the National Constitution Center, Sixth and Arch Streets.

[UPDATED April 8: Ticketts are now sold out.] Admission free, on a first-come, first-served basis. To reserve tickets, e-mail schoolplay@pccy.org.EndText

215-854-5053

@samanthamelamed