‘Exit Strategy’ exposes scandals of U.S. schools
What a savage, twisted little play.
With “Exit Strategy,” playwright Ike Holter has, in a crisp 90 minutes, revealed the underbelly of American society. At the Rec Room through Oct. 13, this play isn’t just a finely tuned, crackling drama about a Chicago public school on the verge of shutdown. The play is about racism, capitalism, cynicism, grief, hopes, dreams, life and death. It’s about why we dare fight for what we believe in. It’s about when we decide to smarten up and give up.
Directed by Matt Hune, the production has the finest castI’ve seen in Houston since last year’s “The Last Days of Judas Iscariot,” with standout performances from the entire ensemble — Matthew Jamison, Susan Koozin, Greg Dean, Michelle Magallon, Melanie Burke, Miguel Cortes and Gabriel Regojo.
In a storyline that will feel all too familiar with those following recent threats of closures of several HISD schools, “Exit Strategy” chronicles the travails of four teachers, one administrator and one student as they attempt to save their school, which is more valuable to the city as a bulldozed plot of land.
The cast speaks like a seasoned secretary at a typewriter — rapid, punctuated, rolling over and into each other’s lines of dialogue. Filled with slang and profanity, their words are, on the surface, Aaron Sorkin-esque insults that are surprising and hilarious. But bubbling underneath these jabs are deeper emotions, including resentment, that burst out in incredible fashion.
Just look at Donnie (Cortes), a charismatic senior who wants to lead the effort to save his school, spitting hard truths at an administrator, played by the wily, astonishing Jamison. Donnie is about to be suspended for attempting to raise money for his school, which is too poor to buy toilet paper. You can see in his face his anger and passion. He doesn’t face the audience, a common tendency in theater. No, he looks directly at the administrator, so that we can’t see his full figure, so that his confrontation is total and personal and private.
But, as in “Judas,” every searing monologue is upended by yet another brutal moment. Nearly every character has this kind of moment. Dean, as the tired, veteran teacher, opposes the teachers’ plan to stage a walkout. In a lesser play, he would be a villain. Yet look at his slow, steady gait, suggesting someone who has fought and lost one too many battles.
What else would you expect this man to do? And what else would you expect Donnie, the student activist, to do? Thus exists the clash between the young and old, between idealistic activism and cynical pragmatism, between two parties that want the same thing but fight over not only how to achieve it but whether the effort is worth the risk.
The play was written after the 2012 Chicago teacher’s strike — 26,000 of them walked out of their classrooms that day — and after the 2013 shutdown of 49 public schools. Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who instituted the closures, is never mentioned by name in “Exit Strategy,” yet he looms over the play like a ghost.
But Holter’s critique isn’t focused on individual politicians or policies. The play chooses, rather, to reveal the failings of the American public school system by showing how even the smartest, hardest working teachers have no power to change their students’ fate.
The set, designed by Stefan Azizi, is a crumbling, unromantic depiction of apathy, where “the paint’s running away from the walls.” On the first day of school, Sadie (Burke) has brought not only snacks but also rat poison, to stop the rat feces from appearing in the cafeteria cheese dip. Jania (Magallon) asks her coworkers if she should call the police about the street gang that threatened her walk to work. We see that there is nothing to be done about all this.
And you know who’s missing from this play? The White Savior, that educated, hopeful white teacher who swoops in on a “rescue the impoverished brown children” mission. Holter eviscerates this trope with biting references to both the films “Dangerous Minds” and “Freedom Writers.” There is no room here for unrealistic, hopeful happy endings that make the audience feel good.
Instead, we have an unvarnished look at the way our society fails our youth, how we rob those who live in poor, predominantly minority neighborhoods of equal opportunity. More than one of the teachers says the equivalent of, “I’m just so (expletive) tired.” Over the course of the play, we begin to understand why. As they fight and fight, we root for them, even if there’s not much to root for. By the end, we realize what a scandal it is that we have pitted them against such dire odds.