SF Mime Troupe - Schooled

how Lavinia Jones feels about her son Thomas’ new school, Eleanor Roosevelt High. Decades of funding cuts have resulted in old textbooks, crumbling classrooms, and underpaid teachers, making Roosevelt exactly the sort of public school that has failed students time and time again. Isn't it time for something… efficient? And efficient is exactly what Fredersen Babbit, from Learning Academy for Virtual Achievement (LAVA Corp.), promises to bring to the district. New Technology, remote learning, computer-generated teachers –LAVA promises to put the “virtual” in achievement! But with kids learning from home, do we need all these empty schools? And with privatization on the line, a Wall Street heavy hitter on one side and a feisty octogenarian teacher Ethel Orocuru on the other, suddenly the next School Board election is more about a hidden agenda than the open curriculum. Are schools the last chance for democracy, or is education the next frontier for profit? Can we trust a politician’s public/private plan to replace an out-of-date system, or is there something even more sinister than privatization going on behind the doors of LAVA? And wait - when did the hall monitors start wearing brown shirts and arm bands? When it comes to the real plan for the future of education – and of our democracy - are we all about to get... Schooled?

You don’t need a PhD to know that this equation, preposterous a year ago, is a frightening reality today. History students learn that strong-arm fascism and its despotic leaders have occurred with ugly regularity throughout time. Unfortunately, without that knowledge, we are doomed to live the “yes” answer to that classic essay question, “Does history repeat itself?” Today, with a system that pushes the bottom line rather than critical thinking, our educators are struggling to teach the lessons that will empower our citizens and revitalize our democracy.

Right now the hottest ticket on Broadway is a history lesson. And at the SF Mime Troupe we are more committed than ever to use our stage as a classroom and our classrooms as stages, showing and telling the stories of these challenging times, while helping others to create and perform real stories of their own.

This summer in Schooled, the SF Mime Troupe tackles the crisis in education itself. We examine the dangers to a public liberal education, the larger forces behind them, and their threat to our participatory democracy. Playing multiple characters, Rotimi Agbabiaka, Velina Brown, Lisa Hori-Garcia and Keiko Shimosato Carreiro, represent various players in this tug of war with the minds of our children (and future voters) at the heart of it. Written by Michael Gene Sullivan and Eugenie Chan with songs by Ira Marlowe, Schooled reflects our passion for this subject as teachers, parents, and citizen artists - a passion that will be shared in post-show discussions with our audiences and community leaders.


Schooled is written by Michael Gene Sullivan and Eugenie Chan.
Music & lyrics by Ira Marlowe.
Directed by: Michael Gene Sullivan
Music director: Daniel Savio
Musicians include: William Durkee, Dominic Moisant, and Daniel Savio.