Pipeline-A New Play at Lakewood Playhouse

“I really hate you for being so beautiful and confused.  But I’m really glad you aren’t coming back here anymore.  Because this place can’t hold you.  This place can’t hold none of us.”

Nya, an inner-city public high school teacher, is committed to her students but desperate to give her only son Omari opportunities they’ll never have.   When a controversial incident at Omari’s upstate private school threatens to get him expelled, Nya must confront both his rage and her own choices as a parent.  But will she be able to reach him before a world beyond her control pulls him away?

The play draws its name from the “school-to-prison pipeline” which refers to the policies and practices that push our nation’s schoolchildren out of classrooms and into the juvenile and criminal justice systems.  Gwendolyn Brooks’ prophetic poem, “We Real Cool”, is the backdrop of this passionate play about educators who see the humanity in their students and a family fighting social injustice and reroute the pipeline.

With profound compassion and lyricism, Pipeline brings an urgent conversation powerfully to the fore.  Morisseau pens a deeply moving story of a mother’s fight to give her son a future – without turning her back on the community that made him who he is.

“A powerful, passionate, and intelligent new play.” – The Village Voice