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Springfield-born Playwright Takes On Chicago Violence

David Gatewood-Cowart

Chicago has endured more than 2,000 shootings this year and a nearly 50 percent increase in homicides. Most of those shootings were gang-related. Some have taken the lives of children.

Springfield-born singer and actress Nattalyee Randall said she felt she couldn't just sit by. She picked up a pen and began writing a play. As someone who has worked in musical theater since childhood, Randall soon found herself writing songs to tell her story.

The result is "Miseducation," a play with music that tracks the lives of a substitute teacher and several of her students who struggle to exist amid a swirl of street violence.

 Randall said her play "asks the question, What does it take to move up in a city that only pulls you down?"

There will be a free staged reading of "Miseducation" in Randall's hometown tonight at 7:30 in the club room of the Hoogland Center for the Performing Arts.

Randall said she was particularly moved by the death last fall of nine-year-old Tyshawn Lee, who was killed execution-style as he played basketball in an alley. Police arrested an adult gang member for the shooting, whom they said had vowed to kill "kids, grandmas and all" in retaliation for the shooting deaths of members of his own family.

The death of nine-year-old Tyshawn Lee by a gang member inspired Nattalyee Randall's play.

"I was like, I can't sit back anymore and watch this. I don't know how my voice can be heard, but I knew I had to put it out there and I just started writing," Randall said on GLT's Sound Ideas. 

In some ways, Chicago's street violence is an unlikely topic for the singer-playwright. She got her start singing in the choir of St. Paul A.M.E. Church in Springfield where her parents were pastors.

As a child, she appeared in a Springfield Muni Opera production of "Annie" and later starred as Effie White in "Dreamgirls" at the SpringfieldTheatre Center, as well as the narrator in "Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat" at the Muni.

She went on to perform in other regional theater and currently tours with the new wave a cappella group, Vocalosity.

"Miseducation" is somewhat autobiographical. Randall draws on her experiences working as a substitute teacher and tutor in the public schools of New York, where she now lives.  She borrowed from the lingo and background stories of the some of the students she's met.

The title "Miseducation," she said, refers to a "messed up" system of education.

"I literally met a 10th grader who couldn't read the word 'the,' who was like, 'I don't know what that says.' And I said, how are you in 10th grader and no one has helped you?"

Randall said "the school system needs to change so our students can change."
 

Despite the somber topic, Randall says there are some light moments in the play.

"When these kids are having fun and just being themselves, poking fun at each other and talking about the teacher and each other it's super funny and totally relatable, but when the play gets heavy, it's very heavy," she added.

"With these characters, I have to write them real," Randall said. "And I have to write them for today because a lot of time when you see movies like "Freedom Riders" everybody gets a happy ending, but that's not real life. I watch it when I substitute teach and tutor in New York. There is not a happy ending for everyone, and I wanted to portray that. Not every kid makes it out. We have to be realistic. If we're not realistic we can't save those kids."

There will be an audience talk-back following this evening's staged reading. Randall said she eventually hopes to stage the play in Chicago and off-Broadway in New York and to bring a full production back to Springfield.

Randall will return to Springfield October 19 to perform with her a cappella group Vocalosity at the Sangamon Auditorium.