No Child

Nilja Sun tells us at the beginning of her stunning one-woman show No Child, ”'take the train from 59^th Street Manhattan to the Bronx and in only 18 minutes you'll have travelled from the richest congressional district in the country to the poorest.” Sun, a writer and performer, takes us inside New York's crisis-ridden public school system by looking at her own experiences as a 'teaching artist' working with high school students in the Bronx. Sun has the task of directing the students in Our Country's Good – a play about convicts putting on a play in a newly-settled Australia. We gradually see the parallels between the violent lives of the convicts and the environment these kids are brought up in. They are surrounded by gang violence; many are subjected to abuse; most have absent parents. Sun is a joyfully physical performer and transforms between all 16 characters in the blink of an eye: the elderly janitor, the driven principal, the enervated teaching staff, and the sassy but vulnerable students. No Chilld… is a powerful and always entertaining start to the Melbourne Festival. Sun holds a deep compassion for her subjects. Almost the entire audience of the Fairfax Studio gave Sun a standing ovation for her remarkable performance and beautifully written work.

Running at the Arts Centre Fairfax Studio until Sunday 14 October