BWW Reviews: Boulevard's GIDEON'S KNOT Poses Puzzling Questions to Art and Education

Provocative and prophetic, a puzzle waiting to be unraveled before the audience's eyes similar to a Gordian knot, the Boulevard Theatre on stage at Walker's Point Center for the Arts presents a limited run of Gideon's Knot, a Wisconsin premiere. Artistic Director Mark Bucher stages Johnna Adams play under the direction of Patricia Durante in this daring and unsettling view on the state of education in one small classroom set in Lake Forest, Illinois. Does an audience cut this production's tragedies out of their thoughts or pull the answers to these probing questions in an attempt to understand perhaps this evolving microcosm of American education presented in the production.

Playwright Adams's 75 minute, no intermission drama sets the scene for a confrontation between a parent and a teacher in that Lake Forest 5th grade classroom. Corryn Fell, the mother of Gideon, and his teacher, Heather Clark, meet on a school afternoon the weekend after Gideon writes an especially disturbing story based on Gaelic war tales he learned from his mother, a college professor in Mideveal Poetry at Northwestern University. Heart wrenching dynamics explode from this small room where essays are posted on bulletin boards and notes or texts are passed between students, every day events that often ocurr unnoticed.

When Gideon passes his handwritten story around the classroom on a Friday, he will automatically be suspended for a week, to be discussed at this parent-teacher conference between Corryn and Heather on Monday. By the time the weekend transpires, tragedy ensues, so the topic of bullying, social media, and violence in schools unravels between parent and teacher with dire consequences. Think these topics would circumvent the 5th grade? Please think once again. How innocent are 5th graders in the 21st century with their constant exposure to the plethora of explicit-in-every-sense photos and media, whether on a cell phone, TV or computer screen? Gideon's Knot prophetically asks how innocent will children remain now and ten years from now? How and why does this matter?

This womanly quartet, Adams and Durante along with actors Nicole Gorski playing Clark and on the first weekend Beth Monhollen in the role of Corryn Fell acutely reflect a mother's anguish over her son's suspension and the resulting consequences of that action, which reverberates to crush a teacher's heart. The school administration probes Fell and Gideon---when does creativity, especially from developing, immature talent, become disturbing, pornographic or threatening? When and at what age might this type of creativity be acceptable, if ever.? The two actors, with Monhollen reading for only a few days before the production due to unexpected circumstances, develop these characters with riveting believability, torched with pathos whlle touched with humor. Even though the audience has less insight into Clark's character because often teacher's keep their personal lives more private.

Boulevard's feminine, four women tour de force prevails in this compelling, courageous production that reveals often appalling, honest, intimate and then somewhat redeeming scenarios for the audience to consider. Gideon's Knot exposes the dilemmas inherent to American's educational process, in schools and in the home, where mother's work and father's overwork to pay the bills, or in reversed roles to often pay for food. clothes and sometimes elite educations. To maintain a life when society demands children become adults perhaps too quickly and pick up grown-up responsibilites, to figure their worlds out alone. To live in a world that revels in isolating and confusing social media accessible to anyone, 24/7, almost inescapable. How do parents cope and respond to these challenges when either believing incidents to be immediately critical or merely imature and a little crazed?

The Boulevard sensitively hosts talkbacks after the performances with two members from Milwaukee Public School's Violence Prevention Team. When did this team become necessary, especially in middle schools? The experienced staff responded to questions; said schools are learning alternative dialogues to deal with all students in problematic or unclear circumstances, a policy termed "connect before correct." This exemplifies schools, parents and teachers will try to comphrehend what a child or student may be experiencing in their life that explains a disturbing situation and spoken or written words before taking undue or perhaps warranted action. A fine proposal to remember with other individuals in life, too: connect before criticizing. Take the Boulevard's unique opportunity to encounter Gideon's Knot. Contemplate what might have been done. Perplexing puzzles appearing in classrooms which need to be solved if school children will survive their creativity, educations and social media in the future.

The Boulevard Theatre presents the Midwest Premiere of Gideon's Knot in a limited run at Walker's Point Center for the Arts, a block south from 5th and National, through October 12. For tickets or information, please visit: www.boulevardtheatrestudiioensemble.com

To post a comment, you must register and login.