←Recommendations of TEACH

This is an absolutely remarkable show. In "Teach," everything is blurry. Gender is blurry, power is blurry, the truth is blurry. Nothing is exactly what it seems and everything can be interpreted one way or another. The truth becomes something impossible to pin down--and Hoke does a magnificent job of showing how NOTHING is simple. As an educator myself, the idea that you lose your humanity when you take on the role of teacher hit hard--and what are we really trying to do as teachers? Assign intelligence or build people? And how do you build someone? Powerful play. Highly recommended.

I saw the Wordsmyth reading in Houston - and I strongly recommend that any theatre - or university - looking for a nuanced, emotionally engaging, theatrically daring and utterly original take on student/mentor relationships look at this one. The multiple gendered portrayal of the teacher and the student is no mere gimmick - it is an astounding theatrical leap. This is a play written without pronouns - a technical feat of playwriting used to great effect, and one that will open a whole new conversation with your audience,

Just saw Wordsmyth Theater's reading of TEACH in Houston. This drama plays with the inequity of power in pedagogy in a way I've never seen and in so doing upends our understanding of what we think it means to be male or female. How? Chris is a teacher, but we meet Male Chris and Female Chris; Emerson is a student, but we see Male Emerson and Female Emerson. Each male/female character is emotionally consonant. But the teacher/student interaction fluctuates according to the pairing of the 4 actors. See this play - it will fascinate, entertain and teach you.

Teach is an utterly fascinating and fresh take on teacher-student sexual harassment and power dynamics in the classroom and the world of academia. Hoke kept me on the edge of my seat throughout the play and I found my opinion on the characters and situation shifting again and again. The gender fluid construct of the play is a stroke of genius and something I'm now dying to see on stage.

There are playwrights who write for actors, some who write for directors or designers, some who write for audiences, some who write for issues, on and on and on. Donna Hoke has this incredible talent for writing for EVERYONE. She writes characters that actors crave to play, she writes plays into which directors cannot wait to sink their teeth, and she writes about the kinds of things that audiences desperately want to witness and talk about and remember after leaving the theater. And she continues to do all of that with TEACH.

I keep thinking of TEACH as a Rubik's Cube. Hoke picks up a compelling social issue and examines it from every angle, even taking it apart and showing us what's inside. Gender-fluid casting compels audience members to determine whether there's a scenario in which a teacher-student flirtation is more understandable and even acceptable. In the end, everyone is a little bit guilty (some more than others), which is infinitely more interesting and realistic. Hoke never goes for the easy answers, leaving us to our own uneasy conclusions.