In honor of Throwback Thursdays.....
Alan Aymie’s Outstanding One Man Show, “A Child Left Behind”
At The Theatre with Audrey Linden
“Excellence” is the one word I would use to describe Alan Aymie’s highly energetic and dynamic one-man show. Aymie has been a teacher with LAUSD for some eleven years. He has a strong background in writing and acting and it shows! He developed this show in KTC’s INKubator series program, and it is definitely ready for prime time. In this sensitive show, Aymie not only re-lives the frustrations of a displaced teacher, he shows us his dilemma as a parent to a five year old son who has Asperger’s. He whips in and out of scenes with his students into scenes with his son. Energy! He works with lightning speed. I only wish he would have given the audience time to digest some of the action. There needed to be places for reflection. The pacing was frenetic throughout the show and I was worn out. Aymie certainly is a dynamic wonder, but a few well-placed lulls for catharsis and a change of pace would have helped the over-all structure. There was so much packed into the hour and a half show, I just did not get to digest it all.
That being said, Paul Stein’s direction was swift and there were no stagnant moments. The physical space of the classroom on stage was very well used as Aymie walked, and ran about. He climbed on chairs and every inch of the stage was explored. The transitions were incredible and that is attributed to Aymie’s flawless writing. He would go from a scene in which he had said something to his son about not letting kids push him and as he turns around he pick up the next sentence talking to a student “to stop pushing”. He didn’t miss a beat and it was Incredible writing!
The show tracks Aymie’s thoughts about his best teacher his father, who was not a credentialed teacher, but who had innate wisdom to pass on. Aymie absorbed his father’s teachings and incorporated them into his own. We see Aymie marching in a LAUSD picket line. He goes from a “hoity-toity” west side school into a District Intern program at a school in South Los Angeles; not South Central because he does not have a full credential. He ends up at 117th Street School, which is like “a bad episode of Welcome Back Kotter.”
Can he make the cut with these students who are dodging bullets and have a parent who might be a gang member? How does a teacher “teach to the standards” in this vastly different demographic? Aymie realistically shows us typical days in the life of a teacher in East Los Angeles. The L A Times has outed him and other teachers as “less than qualified.” What Aymie is referring to is Superintendent John Deasy’s new VAM. BAM! Value Added Measure by which teachers are evaluated by their students’ test scores. Forget that these kids have been testing way below grade level for years. It is Aymie’s job to raise those scores, now!
He has a very funny scene in which Darnell is not comprehending fifth grade math with “negative pairs”. So, Aymie uses “gang talk” about Crips and Bloods until the Principal put a quick stop to that. In between Aymie must face that his brilliant young five year old son has been diagnosed with Aspergers and we feel the helplessness Aymie feels as a father and an educator. The kid can name every planet, every dinosaur, be a chess genius, but he cannot eye contact. If anything is out of place or if an idiom is used, he freaks out. “I don’t see my kid anymore; I see a skill set.” Aymie went in and out of being the father and the son. I liked the few quieter moments when Aymie would bend down and talk to his son in the chair. I felt the presence of his son and the utter frustration Aymie felt. We needed more of those moments as a breather.
Aymie has it all in this one man show. He shows all the flaws of the LAUSD system, and he vents his frustrations which are palpable. He has to deal with the challenges of his students. How does he do his best for them and also achieve within the LAUSD “model” or system which seems quite flawed indeed. Aymie is working with children who not only won’t graduate and go on to college but who may be killed by gangs. What best servesthem? Do they need more standardized testing or “a hug” and compassion and understanding? Is he “less” of a teacher for lugging his old computer up seven flights of stairs to give to one of his students who lives in cramped quarters. Is he “less” because of an artificial way of measuring success does not take caring, dedication and hard work into account? Or is he “more”? What is “education?”
Aymie shows it all to us. He passed his year, and got out of 117th Street Elementary School and is still teaching in real life and on stage. There were some laughs, some humor, but the overall feeling was mostly that of frustration about an education system that is so flawed. Human beings are discounted and children are being left behind and teachers are being left behind. Aymie does not sugar-coat the situation. I felt the frustration and I felt the humanity.
The evening and in fact, the run of the play is a fund raiser for Jenny Mc Carthy’s autism charity, Generation Rescue.” Proceeds from the ticket sales are being donated. Generation Rescue, founded by parents, JB and Lisa Handley is dedicated to the recovery of children with Autism spectrum disorders. Thanks to producer Gary Grossman and co-producer Les Williams who brought us this high energy one-man show.
