Fish – 12 April 2024
Fish off Broadway jam packs every issue faced by the American public school system into 85 minutes or less. The cast , particularly the young African American students, all gave standout performances with a level of dedication and determination that was palpable from the audience. Through the vehicle of different class titles each scene, the characters commented on and complained about the comparison between the technology, educators, and course offerings they were being offered compared to better schools. In the same breath, it tackled teenage pregnancy, loss of a young sibling, incarcerated mothers, and teachers who violate academic integrity to increase their paychecks.
A lot of issues hit the audience very fast, with varying degrees of feeling forced or preachy. At first, I felt like they were trying to take on too many issues at once. But then I thought about the fact that, in the real world, all of these issues do manifest at the same time. It’s part of why school staff are overwhelmed and can’t handle the pressure. They don’t just have one student or even one school community struggling with a single issue and rallying around it—they have every issue hitting them all at once, so of course it’s incredibly difficult to rise above and care about things like updating curriculums and equipment. I’d imagine when a teacher is face to face with a pregnant minor, all thought of tomorrow’s lesson plan gets put on hold. In real life, this situation may be just as overwhelming as Fish painted it.
Since seeing Fish, I now find myself aware that these underprivileged students who are neglected by the system do know what they’re missing. They know exactly what other kids around the country had. It’s not that they naively think this is all there is—it’s that they don’t know how to attain it, they don’t know if it would be better for them personally, and they don’t know if they’d ever be able to go back. With the sheer number of issues, from lack of school nurse to lack of art class offerings to lack of usable computers, the students and staff are divided on how to prioritize the next thing to acquire when the school can afford it. In some cases, this prevents there from being a next thing.
As far as the show itself, I loved Zay (Josiah Gaffney) as the pesky younger brother whose death due to inadequate school staffing awakened a new reality for his sister, Latricia (Toree Alexandre). Equally captivating was no nonsense Jasmine (Rachel Leslie). I appreciated the different positions on issues not just from the adults verses the kids, but also within each category. Yet with a million different solutions, it’s really difficult to get one implemented. Sometimes characters are so busy yelling about needing help that they lose the specifics of what they should ask for and thus receive nothing. It’s fitting that, towards the end, the students and teachers are interested in government and activism. Fitting and moving.
Everybody deserves a voice. I don’t think Fish is all the way there yet in terms of finding the right balance of how many issues to showcase and comment on to make sure the multitude of institutional failures gets across while also telling a cohesive story that engages the audience emotionally and holds that interest throughout by a method other than monologues that scream into the void about the injustice of it all. Don’t get me wrong, we need that—but in an 85 minute show, we only need it once, in a more focused way. Fish helped me see the inequalities. But I hope in its next iteration it does a better job of making me feel them. All in all, a fantastic place to start teaching an audience to advocate for change.
Pages on Stages 