Achievement Gap Theater
Staging Equity in the Reform Arena
The Education Trust brings you theater for the education-reform movement. Provocative and stirring, playwright-activist Brooke Haycock’s one-woman documentary dramas strip bare some of the most emotionally charged issues we face in American education today. Designed for educators, parents, policymakers, and advocates, Brooke’s performances spark tough conversations about equity in schools.
All Education Trust documentary theater productions begin as conversations. Brooke spends hundreds of hours in schools across the country talking one-on-one with students, teachers, administrators, and school counselors about issues of race, class, opportunity, and achievement. She then weaves these voices into often-raw, richly honest dramatizations that help stimulate uncomfortable but necessary discussions in schools and communities.
Bio
Playwright-activist Brooke Haycock has been crafting and performing issues-focused theater with The Education Trust for nearly a decade. A former high school dropout from an urban public school system, Brooke now spends most of her time back in schools with students and educators, listening to their experiences of equity in education. Inspired by the work of documentarians Studs Terkel and Anna Deavere Smith, Brooke mixes interview with performance to produce incisive chronicles of opportunity and achievement in America. She holds a bachelor's from The University of California, Santa Barbara and a masters from Johns Hopkins.
Check out the Education Week review.
Learn about how you can use these performances in your school, community, or state to advance conversation and action.
Those who question whether all students can soar academically need to hear the story of the aerodynamicist and the bumble bee. Buzz is a testimony to hope, hard work, and high achievement in America’s high-poverty, high-minority high schools. This dynamic performance chronicles the educational struggles and ultimate triumphs of schools, educators, and students who refuse to settle for anything short of real success. Straight from the mouths of students, teachers and school leaders and onto the stage…catch the Buzz.
Catalyst is an unflinching portrayal of the power of educators to change students’ lives. Following two young men, Carl and Isaiah, Catalyst takes on the tough questions of student engagement, bringing audiences face to face with some of the most devastating—and inspiring—images of student transformation.
Dilated Pupils and the Not-So-Soft Bigotry of a Nation takes audiences on a whirlwind tour through the school doors, past the metal detectors, and straight into the lives of three high school students. Told from the perspectives of students and the adults in their lives, Dilated Pupils dares audiences to confront the stories of young people hobbled by low expectations.
Six Degrees of Preparation offers a powerful and intimate opportunity to examine teacher preparation, support, and retention. Commissioned by a state body of higher education, and based on more than 300 interviews with teachers, teacher candidates, teacher educators, teacher leaders, and students, Six Degrees exposes damaging beliefs and practices in school districts and schools of education, vividly portraying their impact on new teachers and the children they serve. One woman, 15 characters, 45 minutes.
