Exit Strategy: A Play - Softcover

Holter, Ike

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0810138832 ISBN 13: 9780810138834

Verlag: NORTHWESTERN UNIV PR, 2018

Inhaltsangabe

Righteously angry, riotously funny, and wise to the tensions between abstract policy and lived experience, Ike Holter's play Exit Strategy centers on vivid, unforgettable characters struggling to maintain faith in a vocation that is being determinedly undermined.

Drawing from the headlines, Exit Strategy is set in Chicago and tells the story of a fictional public high school slated for closure at the end of the year. Despite funding cuts, bureaucrats run amok, apathy, and a rodent infestation, a small, multiracial group of teachers launch a last-minute effort to save the school, and put their careers, futures, and safety in the hands of a fast-talking administrator who may be in over his head. The tenuous situation also raises fears and anxieties among students, and within the volcanic neighborhood that is home to the school. 

Holter has said that Exit Strategy was inspired by the 2013 mass closure of forty-nine Chicago public schools, which displaced nearly 12,000 children—the majority of directly impacted students were African American and Latinx. Hailed as "riveting," "sharp," and "richly metaphoric" by critics, the play indicts how we educate our children in big American cities, and shows why gaps between haves and have-nots continue to grow.

Exit Strategy is one of seven plays in Ike Holter's cycle of works set in Chicago or Chicago-inspired neighborhoods. 
 

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

IKE HOLTER has emerged from Chicago's independent theater scene as one of American theater's most exciting young artists. Holter's breakthrough play Hit the Wall was first presented at Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre in 2012. The production established his reputation for exquisitely written dramas featuring multigenerational, multiracial casts. His other produced plays include Loom, B-Side Studio, The Wolf at the End of the Block, Sender, Prowess, and The Light Fantastic. Holter is a resident playwright at Victory Gardens Theater and the 2017 winner of the Windham-Campbell Literature Prize for drama.

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Exit Strategy

A Play

By Ike Holter

Northwestern University Press

Copyright © 2018 Ike Holter
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-8101-3883-4

Contents

Production History, 
Exit Strategy, 

CHAPTER 1

Exit Strategy

CHARACTERS

Ricky. Assistant principal. Casually professional head-case with a mile-aminute mouth.

Pam. Old-school educator without a second to spare. End. Of. Her. Rope.

Arnold. Former nice guy turned stone-cold teacher. Lost something.

Luce. Ex-frat boy turned math teacher. Everybody's right-hand man.

Sadie. Assertive educator. Positive foot forward. Till she trips.

Jania. The youngest teacher in the room. Survived the toughest stuff. Acts like it.

Donnie. Student. Spits out words like hand grenades and holds nothing back.

LOCATION

Somewhere in Chicago. A crumbling public school.

NOTE: A slash mark ( / ) in a character's speech means another character has already started their next line; it's an overlap, and both characters are speaking at the same time. An ellipsis (...) in lieu of speech indicates that the characters exchange something silent and necessary. Parenthetical speech means the character is speaking at a (low volume).

Prologue

AUGUST 16, 6 P.M., ASSISTANT PRINCIPAL'S OFFICE

RICKY: So you know what's great / about —

PAM: Stop.

Please. Stop. Just, just, just don't. OK? OK? I mean, you're already so far ahead, Vice, come on: Just Please Please Please. Stop. The. Bullshit.

RICKY AND PAM: ...

RICKY: I was going to ask if you enjoyed the cake.

PAM: ...

RICKY: The, the cake? ... The, uh, the chocolate cake. It's big, it's in the lounge, it's really, really uh I mean it's large, very, very uh ... so I was / just asking if —

PAM: What the fuck are you talking about?

RICKY: This afternoon, I went to the Jewel and I picked up the cake, the big cake — it's chocolate, it's in the lounge right now and it's got the logo on it: "Go Tigers," right, (Go Tigers), uhhhh ...

I was just wondering if you enjoyed it, I was just wondering if you had a taste; 'cause this, you know, this-is-supposed-to-be-a-fun-little-get-together.

PAM: ... Chocolate?

RICKY: Chocolate-chocolate, two different kinds, actually. Or maybe just double?

PAM: You picked it out?

RICKY: I (well) I actually designed it, / actually —

PAM: You picked it out —

RICKY: I picked it out, yes, / that's what I did —

PAM: So, you went all the way to Jewel, you grabbed a big cake, you put it right in the middle of the teachers' lounge for us to, what, exactly, to just munch on?

RICKY: Welllllll, / sure, I mean —

PAM: For us to just "dig in," huh, really just / "chow down" and what not, right?

RICKY: I mean, it's pretty good, and who / doesn't like chocolate, right?

PAM: Just sit around the table and stitch and bitch with the gym teachers and that stupid secretary with the fake tits and the idiot janitor — you just went out and got us a nice big cake so we can just hunker down on the dog days of summer and "have a fun little get together," is that it, Vice, is that your big goddamn idea?

RICKY: You can just call me Ricky —

PAM: I respect authority.

RICKY: OK, Pam, OK, see, OK, see there's where you're wrong there, see, uh, I'm not I'm not the authority and to be perfectly honest —

PAM: You saved me for last because out of all those sharks swimming over there I'm the one who scares you the most — that's perfectly honest, isn't it?

PAM AND RICKY: ...

PAM: The cake's fine. I had a piece. Nice office.

RICKY: Ohmygod, uh, ohmygod, thank you, Pam, thank you very /much —

PAM: You're gay?

RICKY: Uh ...

PAM: Figured as much. Nice office, like what you've done with the place ...

RICKY: I actually don't discuss sexual politics in the workplace —

PAM: "Sexual politics": what, are you screwing a lobbyist or something?

RICKY: I mean my personal life, I mean my private life, I mean / my reality —

PAM: Jesus Christ this is boring, I don't care. When's the Band-Aid coming off?

RICKY: The —

PAM: Look, 'bout twenty-five years ago we had a dog, beautiful collie or something, nice-looking animal liked to chase squirrels and shit on the Sunday Times, family friend till the end, all that jazz, all that, anyway one summer it died, sad times in suck city "boo-hoo-hoo," so it bit the big one, right, but you know what I did? Well, I'll tell you what I did, Vice. See before my kid got home from baseball, I went and got ice cream, I went and got a cake, I went and planned ahead, so that when my kid came home I had enough distractions to take away the feeling of that Band-Aid ripping off when somebody finds out that a semi-truck turned Sparky into rat food.

RICKY: Jesus Christ —

PAM: He's not here, honey, it's just you and me now, kid, you and me, and you didn't bring me down here to chit-chat with the Vice without some Band-Aids coming off. Hit me.

RICKY: OK.

PAM: Hit me.

RICKY: OK! Pam. The, the negotiations didn't go as smoothly as we expected.

PAM: Negotiations? What negotiations?

RICKY: OK, OK, well, for the last — well, since forever, really, uh, the school board has been making an active case to the city about the necessity and the strength behind keeping Tumbldn open but / since the last meeting with —

PAM: Yeahyeahyeahyeah I know, I know. What I don't know is why you'd call a one-way conversation with the city a negotiation. That's just a really interesting turn of phrase right there, Mr. Vice, it's interesting. Sorry. English teacher. Had to point it out. Twenty-two years, hearing the crap that comes outta kids' mouths twenty-two, sorry, twenty-three years, and still, whenever I hear something that grits my gear I gotta say, "Let's look at that, let's examine that." I mean slang's one thing, sure, but completely rearranging the English fucking language so that you can lie, to me, well then I gotta say something —

RICKY: They're closing the school. The end of the year. Low test scores, unfavorable conditions. Lots of — lots, of lots, of lots of stuff. No way around it. Locks on the doors, day after the last day of school, it's done, it's set, it's structured, irreversible. It's over.

PAM: That's it?

RICKY: That's, that's, that's a lot, Pam. That's, that's a lot of information. So / I thought —

PAM: Let us down easy, let us down quick. I get it Vice, I get it — but that's it? No blood, no guts, just tears and chocolate cake, chocolate-chocolate cake. This is it?

RICKY: People have been in and out of this office, all night, in tears —

PAM: Was it Arnold? Did he cry? I bet he did, oh Arnold, Arnold's just a little bitch, / isn't he?

RICKY: I'm here to offer you guidance and support. This is new, this is large, this is a shock —

PAM: I'm a Chicago fucking teacher, nothing shocks me, you stupid prick — nothing-shocks-me. Forty percent of our seniors graduated last year, Vice. One could say that I had a feeling. There's a gang that operates out of that 7-Eleven on the corner, they knock into me when I'm picking up smokes, sure, I had an inkling. There are twenty computers. For three...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: NORTHWESTERN UNIV PR
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2018
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0810138832
• ISBN 13: 9780810138834
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 96
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: GS1 Slovakia; https://www.gs1sk.org; ; Nantersk� 23; Žilina; 010 08; Slowakei