INTERVIEW: ‘Fish,’ a new play, dissects modern educational system
Photo: Fish stars, from left, Josiah Gaffney and Torée Alexandre. Photo courtesy of Valerie Terranova Photography / Provided by Everyman Agency with permission.
Fish, the world-premiere play by writer Kia Corthron, showcases a story immersed within the United States’ often difficult educational system. One pivotal character is Tree, a high school senior who finds herself at an underfunded public school, according to press notes. Then there’s Ms. Harris, an English teacher who grows tired of budget cuts and standardized testing.
The play comes to New York City audiences courtesy of Keen Company and the Working Theater, which is centered on narratives surrounding working people. Performances of Fish continue through April 20 at Theatre Row on 42nd Street. Adrienne D. Williams directs the piece, which has an accessible ticketing program that sets admission prices set on a sliding scale, from $0 to $130.
Recently Hollywood Soapbox exchanged emails with Corthron, whose other new play, Tempestuous Elements, recently finished a run at Arena Stage. Other credits to her name: A Cool Dip in the Barren Saharan Crick, Breath, Boom and Force Continuum. Her work has been produced far and wide, from Playwrights Horizons to the New York Theatre Workshop. Questions and answers have been slightly edited for style.
How did this project begin for you? What inspired you to put pen to paper?
This question is always hard for me because, I think, doesn’t everybody have opinions/ideas/tirades about the public school system? I first drafted the play over the course of 2018, when I was a member of Keen Company’s Playwrights Lab, an annual developmental project for mid-career playwrights. But it wasn’t as if the idea suddenly came to me then. Rather, the year-long residency provided me with an opportunity to address a topic that had been nudging me for years, to finally put pencil to paper. (I write longhand and with lead.)
Did you have to conduct any research on the current educational realities out there?
I interviewed some public high school students. I remember going to at least one public school the year I was creating Fish — the fanciest: Stuyvesant. But over the years I’d been to many public schools as a teaching artist, including a school on the Upper West Side accepting students who had been expelled from other public schools as well as the high school for incarcerated girls on Riker’s Island (the latter perhaps my favorite teaching gig).
And I read a lot. I wanted to address the struggles of public school teachers as well as students. I was very much influenced by Dana Goldstein’s The Teacher Wars, a history of American teachers; and former Assistant Secretary of Education Diane Ravitch’s The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education.
How do you authentically convey the feelings and thoughts of two main characters who are seemingly quite different?
All the characters — the regular public school students, their teachers, the charter school students, the charter school teacher, the charter school student who gets kicked out and sent back to the regular public school — each is different but all sharing the same socioeconomic world. As for the main student and teacher, they’re both human beings in very difficult situations who have become intransigent, refusing to hear the other, at least in the beginning. They may be more similar than different.
Would you consider this a message play? Are you hoping to inspire change or merely hold up a microscope?
I’m not sure what is meant by a “message play,” but I certainly hope, at least, that Fish inspires discussion. For it to actually inspire change? That would be The Dream.
How have performances been going? How have audiences responded?
It seems that folks are consistently moved, but they express that in different ways. Our early preview audiences were quiet, but sometimes half or all stood during the applause. But when they all remained seated, it seems they were still affected, and it’s the being affected that kept them from wanting to move.
Last night we were nearly full, a large number of the seats filled with a couple of college groups, and thus the overall makeup became our youngest audience to date. They were rollicking — laughing in all the places I hoped they would — and listening through the quieter scenes. At the end-of-show blackout, they all quickly and enthusiastically rose to their feet, as one. We had instituted some changes in rehearsal that day resulting in our best run so far, but it was also the energy of that particular audience. It’s what live theater’s about, right? That the audience influences the experience as much as what is happening on stage.
How important are companies like Keen Company?
Keen Company brought in the Working Theater as a co-producer. Keen’s mission is to “celebrate the complexities of hope and the joys of the human condition”; the Working Theater creates theater for and about working people, and as such provides sliding scale tickets to ensure their shows are accessible to all — which made for the perfect producing partnership for Fish.
I had been itching to address the public school system for some time, but had I not been invited to participate in the 2018 Keen Playwrights Lab, I can’t say for sure that I would have even yet written the play. And, had I addressed the topic at some other time and under different circumstances, it would not have been the same story — perhaps better, perhaps worse, but certainly different. So I’m glad the script was written under the conditions it was because now, under the direction of Adrienne D. Williams and our brilliant cast, crew, and design, I think it all turned out pretty good.
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Fish, written by Kia Corthron, continues through April 20 at Theatre Row in Midtown Manhattan. The play is co-produced by Keen Company and Working Theater. Click here for more information and tickets.
