A play on radical hope proves its resounding message
Towards Youth: A Play on Radical Hope aims to showcase transnational case studies of global drama classrooms as sites of activism, and it succeeds with a passionate fervour that makes for a transcendent theatrical experience. Through a nine-person cast that performs a stunning piece of verbatim theatre written by playwright Andrew Kushnir, the lives of youth from Toronto, England, Greece, India, and Taiwan are examined with a politically relevant lens. Dr. Kathleen Gallagher, an OISE professor and researcher, travels to each location and interviews each student with compassion and heart about their future aspirations and love of acting. The cast seamlessly transitions between languages, embodying schoolchildren and teachers in English, Greek, Mandarin, and Hindi. Videos of the time Dr. Gallagher’s team spent in each country are projected behind the actors as they cycle through different classrooms. The multimedia combination produces an artistic spectacle that captivates and enriches the audience with its diversity, and the ethnographic research is translated into tender moments of global connection. Interactions between encouraging, perseverant educators and enthusiastic students, whose schooling is often shadowed by their politically turbulent environments, are the highlights of the performance. Towards Youth reinforces the power of the arts and portrays theatre not as an escape, but as a reflection of our fraught realities. By valuing the opinions of youth and foregrounding how drama can inspire mobilization, the play creates a world that treasures cultural differences and illustrates the insights young people possess. The last word of the play is “adjust,” which is repeated by the entire cast as they stand downstage and gaze out at the audience—the conclusion is a necessary call to action for all.
Towards Youth: A Play on Radical Youth runs at Crow’s Theatre until March 16.
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