Next Act Takes Audiences to School in "The Principal Principle"

Next Act Theatre released its second virtual performance of the season this week, a look at the struggles faced by high school teachers in the fictional Chinua Achebe Academy on Chicago’s South Side during the Before Times. “The Principal Principle,” directed by Marti Gobel and written by former Chicago Public School teacher Joe Zarrow, takes audiences inside the English department’s office to meet a group of educators who fit into familiar types. There is the get-along, go-along department chair Ola (Ericka Wade); the old school, can’t-wait-for-retirement Denise (a wonderfully feisty Flora Coker); the innovative idealist (a fascinating Malaina Moore) and the utter fish out of water Kay (a passionate April Paul), who is an impressionable newbie with little training and no experience. As the play unfolds it’s also apparent that this freshman teacher has no idea how to reach her students, many of whom are a million miles away from Kay’s own middle class, white bread life, growing up in an affluent Chicago suburb. Antagonizing these weary, but good hearted teachers at every turn is the principal, Ms. Wei (a stiff Megan Kim), who believes that education can only be measured by scientific data. An administrator with very little time in the classroom, Wei engages a test prep company to design their new curriculum, ensuring that students will do well on standardized tests that will determine the future employment of the teachers and funding for the school.

Anyone who has spent time in a classroom or has friends who are teachers will recognize many of the conversations and frustrations of educators, pre-pandemic. It’s well known that many have insufficient technology and supplies for their classrooms, so they buy their own. Their curricula are subject to the whims of the latest, trendy educational philosophy. Teachers’ expertise is chronically undervalued to the extent that Teach for America type programs place young college grads in struggling classrooms after only weeks of training. They are underpaid and often put in long hours outside of the school day to grade papers and prepare lessons. Increasingly, in addition to teaching in their subject area, educators are asked to act as social workers as well – not to mention their new responsibility of leading active shooter drills.

In “The Principal Principle,” it is as if playwright Zarrow made a list of all of his challenges and complaints about teaching in Chicago and decided to mash them together into one play. The arc of the story centers on Kay, who shows up on her first day, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and ready to take on the world. In an acknowledged but unearned moment later, she mounts her desk a la “Dead Poets’ Society” to declare that she’s abandoning the mandated binder of lessons and methods, to serve her students in the best ways she can invent. But by the end of the year she is exhausted and disheartened. She has no energy or empathy left for her students, their parents, or her fellow educators. She’s done.

The specificity of the script, along with its occasional absurdity, feels authentic but doesn’t ultimately have much new to say. The characters and situations are easily recognizable, as is the feeling of hopelessness at the play’s end (echoing the title of Achebe’s landmark book – “Things Fall Apart”). In this scenario the teachers are good – managing the best way they can. The administration is bad – micromanaging and working against the students’ best interests. The students themselves are endlessly frustrating and the situation only becomes more dire. The set, designed by Rick Rasmussen, also reinforces this feeling of trapped stasis. The English Department’s square office is crammed with desks and books, putting each educator in her own corner and keeping her there for the majority of the play.

As Shelley, Moore is the most interesting character and the only one willing to act on her own principles to educate her students, in the way that she feels are the most impactful. Moore does a nice job of centering the teacher, balancing her pragmatic side with her efforts to outsmart the system from within. As the newbie Kay, April Paul is an exposed nerve. All heart and barely a sleeve to hang it on, her passion and desperation are palpable, but some of her scenes border on melodrama. As usual, Flora Coker is a joy to watch. In the role of the tired, old hand who’s through with the BS, Coker is brusque and honest to a fault. Her threats to report ridiculous new job requirement to “the union” still sting a bit, ten years after Act 10 stripped teachers in Wisconsin of their collective bargaining power. As the hard-hearted, statistics-driven principal, Kim doesn’t take the few opportunities the script gives her to put a human face on the head of the school, who is facing her own gauntlet of measurements and evaluation from administrators above her.

Performed back in the Next Act theater space, this production does feel one step closer to seeing a traditional play, although the sketchy sound quality from muffled body mics reminds viewers that we are at least a few months away from being in the same room. On the plus side, it should remind every parent that educators faced all the challenges depicted here a year ago, before they were asked to conduct classes remotely via Zoom.