HHHH
It could be when we're asked to write down the answer to an equation – and it's like a flashback to exams when the mind went blank. It could be when the air is peppered with the formulaic praise, the "must try harder" exhortations, the character assassinations that are the timeless jargon of school report cards.
It's scary: as Junction 25, the young performance collective attached to Tramway, is voicing firsthand experiences of the current school system, we're unexpectedly plunged into our own frames of reference.
For the adults who are seeded in among the cast – and like them trying to get the right answers down in time on the exam paper (cum programme) – what is so tremendously powerful, unnerving even, about Anoesis is how this current generation are expressing the same confusions their parents, even their grandparents felt about the education system.
Actually, the Junction 25 crew are probably more articulate about it – and maybe bolshier, as their letter to Education Secretary Mike Russell pithily indicates. The bland, generic reply raises smiles and eyebrows. Jack's piano playing, however, surprises us to tears. Music, not language, is how he communicates. His compositions soar out from behind a curtain, the unseen Jack who doesn't fit the system -
Junction 25, a brilliantly focused ensemble of forthright individuals, has devised a hard-hitting work that asks the questions we tend to give up on – once we've left school. Hands up who wants to see it again? Me! Me! Me!
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