The students acquitted themselves quite admirably, but the real discovery came during the post-performance discussion, which included the entire cast, as well as the actors Eisa Davis and Frankie Faison. Instead, what made me really sit up and think was a comment from one of the students, in response to a general question about how working on the play affected them.
I do not know anything about this young student actor, but this was certainly the first time I had heard an inner-city high school student, albeit one at an arts magnet school, make a statement that heretofore had emanated mostly from the mouths and pens of pundits amateur and professional older than I am. We read Albee in English class, although shorn of any context that would have truly revealed The Zoo Story to us, but when it came to putting on a show, the material catered to whatever youthful skills we may have had, rather than advancing them.
How many high schools not only allow, but push their kids to grapple with great works? But by playing against someone greater than themselves, they discover the challenge that is acting, even if the auditorium is not as full as it might have been had Cats been on offer. As for the trash that bombards kids? We are all bombarded by it. If this is what is served up for adult consumption as morning news, I truly cannot imagine the messages and media consumed by high schoolers, middle schoolers, even elementary school kids today.
And while most thoughtful people perpetually decry the dumbing down of cultural conversation, the debasement of entertainment, we do our youths no favor if we simplify their education, be it in the name of in loco parentis , ticket sales or budgets.
What I was pleased to hear on Friday evening is that there are kids who realize the potential effects of what schools and society at large offers them, and they hunger for more. We underestimate the capacity and the appetites of younger minds at their own peril, since not every student goes to an arts high school, not every student is drawn to work by artists like August Wilson let alone forced to defend its place on school stages in front of a board of education.
