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DocuSign Envelope ID: F859AB28-066D-45E9-BB24-D873BDC015A0
<br /> A Kid Like Jake: First Time Playwright's
<br /> Masterpiece at Deep Dish Theater
<br /> I!EVENT INFORMYV110N
<br /> Chapel Hill--(Fri.,Aug.29,2014-Sat.,Sep.20,2014)
<br /> Deep Dish Theater:A Kid Like Jake
<br /> Fridays,Saturdays,Sundays:Adults$25,Seniors/Educators$23,Students$21;Wednesdays, Thursdays:Adults$23,Seniors/Educators$21,Students$19--Deep
<br /> Dish Theatre, (919)968-1515,http://rviviv.degpdisliflieater.or. /
<br /> By Jeffrey Rossman
<br /> September 6, 2014 - Chapel Hill, NC:
<br /> On paper it may have seemed that Deep Dish Theater Company was taking a shot-in-the-dark by
<br /> producing a 28-year-old's very first play, but if it was good enough for Lincoln Center, just over a
<br /> year ago, it would certainly be good enough for a 70-seat theater at a mall in Chapel Hill (no
<br /> offense intended, Deep Dish). Daniel Pearle, a Harvard graduate, wrote A Kid Like Jake as his
<br /> graduate thesis at the New School for Drama and won the Laurents/Hatcher Foundation Award
<br /> that included a $50,000 cash prize plus $100K towards production of the play. Wow! I got a limp,
<br /> sweaty handshake from my adviser when I completed my thesis.
<br /> It was one of those nights that I was in no mood for what I stereotyped as some kid's attempt to
<br /> proselytize his immature concepts of relationships, raising children, and the absurdities of school
<br /> admissions for children barely out of diapers. Boy was I wrong. Within minutes I realized that I was
<br /> in the presence of a playwright with a perfect-pitch sense of how real people react and speak to
<br /> each other, plus superb actors that, pardon the cliche, inhabited their parts.
<br /> We meet Alex (Meredith Sause) and Gregg (Jim Moscater), a thirtysomething yuppie couple (are
<br /> these 80s terms obsolete?) living the relatively good life in New York City. When Alex speaks,
<br /> she, at first, has that "I'm an entitled rich girl" sound that makes you want to shake her conscience
<br /> awake. Thank goodness it evolves over the course of the play. She and her psychiatrist husband,
<br /> Greg, are discussing the application process for their son Jake —to Kindergarten! There are two
<br /> themes running through this play that forty years ago would have, respectively, seemed utterly
<br /> ridiculous for one and completely unimaginable for the other. The competitiveness and angst, plus
<br /> cost, of getting your child into the "best" elementary school was once culled for comic effect, but
<br /> it's a deadly serious business now. The concept of gender confusion/disparity was disturbing
<br /> enough for most in the dark ages of the 20th century, but the thought that a four-year-old can have
<br /> these feelings is as foreign as the surface of Mars. So we have here the travails of this couple
<br /> navigating, with a little help from a "friend," the treacherous waters of elite private elementary
<br /> school admissions for their son Jake, who is increasingly demonstrating "gender-variant" behavior.
<br /> The third player in this drama is Judy (Rasool Jahan), the advisor and admissions counselor in
<br /> Jake's pre-K program who guides the anxious couple on this perilous journey. Like the others, she
<br /> is so entrenched in this precarious reality that it is hard to tell whether she really has the "best
<br /> interest of the child" in mind, or she is just a mindless feeder to a system gone amuck. Jahan is a
<br /> tremendous talent who at first pulls you in as well-meaning and sincere, but grows ominous and
<br /> chilly as she spouts increasingly odd proclamations on what Jake's behavior might "mean." Her
<br /> suggestion that Jake's enjoyment of Cinderella and The Little Mermaid might be used to enhance
<br /> his diversity in the essays starts off another major conflict in the play.
<br /> Sause and Moscater were, well, perfectly human in their portrayals of this couple battling for their
<br /> son —and one thing is for sure: neither knows the answer. This could have easily fallen into an
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