In a lot of ways, Ellen Gates Starr High School in Logan Square isn’t much different from other CPS neighborhood schools. Enrollment and funding are down, and the school is on probation: the results of standardized tests from this year, currently in session, will determine whether it stays open. Teachers know they’re in danger of layoffs, and that the news will probably arrive in an e-mail in the middle of a school day. Students worry about what they’ll do after graduation; the ROTC office, where they can play video games, drink pop, and chill with the recruiter, looks much more inviting than the cramped and closet-size guidance department.
“We wanted to make sure we had something significant and transformative to add to the conversation,” he says. “Then we thought, What if the audience comes into a school building for a show and the first thing they see is a metal detector?”
Creating a believable world is the first and most important goal of any theatrical production. But the immersive quality of Learning Curve provides an additional challenge. The actors can’t just learn their lines. They also have to learn to talk with audience members in a natural way and guide the conversation along to its intended conclusion and then guide the audience to the next destination without breaking character. Canned responses destroy the illusion that audience members are participating in something real—they might as well be interacting with robots.
“We started with the movement,” Velazquez says. “There was no context, no why or what. We just knew the teacher had been laid off, and her movements would be slow and dragging.”
The Starr High building itself evokes memories, not all of them as pleasant as time with your favorite teacher. The halls are painted the same drab beige you probably remember from your own school, and the classrooms are filled with the same uncomfortable little desks. It has the same dusty school smell. (For added verisimilitude, the school shows up on Google Maps. Feiner discovered that if enough users vet a place, Google can be convinced that it exists.) There’s a reason many people don’t have fond memories of high school. It feels a little bit like jail. But, like the scenes, the set design has its moments of surreality as well. Inside the labyrinth of bookshelves (filled with donated books) that makes up the library, a few volumes hang suspended from the ceiling, flapping like birds or some of the more magical books at Hogwarts. Even in a troubled CPS school, it seems to say, marvelous things can happen.
Through 11/19, various days and times Ellen Gates Starr High School 3640 W. Wolfram 773-866-0875aptpchicago.org $40, $18 for CPS students, faculty, and staff
