After the Revolution
Act One
Scene 1
May 1999.
Veraâs apartment on West 10th Street, early evening.
The mood is ebullient, though everyone is tired.
BEN: So itâs this program, kids from the projects in Roxbury are bused out to our school, thereâs grant money in it for us and it allows our superintendent to pat herself on the back but she doesnât actually take / any responsibility forâ
MEL: Itâs a scandal, itâs / reallyâ
BEN: So these kids get a bus ride, but they donât get help buying textbooks, or paper, they donât get computersâtheyâre supposed to use our computer lab but then theyâd miss their / bus homeâ
MEL: And then theyâre penalized / forâ
BEN: And then itâs a big surprise they arenât passing their classes. Our principal calls a meeting, all these kids and their parents, half the parents donât show, / big surpriseâ
LEO: Right.
MEL: Theyâre working three jobs, theyâre gonna come out to the suburbs because their kidâs not passing math? I mean this is / their biggestâ
LEO: God.
BEN: So the principal is standing up there / lecturingâ
MEL: This guy isâhe should not be in education, he has this / punitiveâ
BEN: The sense is we are giving your children this opportunity and they are / squandering itâ
MEL: Which isâ
BEN: And you can see these parents, the ones who have missed their shift atâRite Aid orâto be here, theyâre just glazing over, I mean, theyâre so / alienatedâ
MEL: So Ben stands up, / I wish I was there.
BEN: I had been kind of hiding in theâso I stand up and I say my name is Ben Joseph, and I teach history and social justice here, and Iâm a Marxist, and I donât think the problem is your children, I think the problem is our society the product of which is this school. Iâm sorry that we have failed you, and I want to work with you and your children for change.
MEL: I wish I had been there.
LEO: And the principal?
MEL: Forget / it.
BEN: Furious. Goes white. Tries to bring the conversation back to personal responsibility.
MEL: But in the meantime Ben has them working on a list of / âwhat was it?
BEN: I said this meeting shouldnât be about us telling you what we need, you should be doing the talking, what do you need?
LEO: Good for you, bro.
MEL: What Benjiâs not telling you is that he told these kids at the beginning of the year that if they wanted extra help after school and they missed their bus, he would drive them home, you know, forty-five minutes toâand a lot of them took him up on it.
(Brief pause.)
BEN: And what about you, how were your classes this semester?
LEO: MyâI was on sabbatical, I didnât tell you that?
BEN: But you didnât travel? . . .
LEO: Nah, just stayed home to work on the book.
BEN: The same one?
MEL: Donât say it like that.
BEN: Like what? I said / it neutrally.
MEL: It takes a long time to write a book. It takes me a long time to read a book.
LEO: The answer is yes. Same one.
(Brief pause.)
Sammyâs been having a big season, you know, with the baseball, so itâs been good to be around for that, especially since Beth is working again.
BEN: Well. Standing offer. Trade for a day. Anytime you want to come to Brookline and teach six periods a day Iâll swing over to Tufts and do one of your sociology lectures.
(Vera has entered. She is sprightly at eighty-two, but fragile, and maybe a little off balance.)
VERA: Has the grad...