Maurice Emmanuel Parent Photo by Mikki Schaffner

Parent's chatty, pleasant opening is actually a conversation with the audience. He asks people where they went to school (in Cincinnati, that means high school) and gets plenty of information. He asks about favorite teachers. And he asks teachers in the audience to identify themselves. On opening night there were several, and that led to plenty of moments in Parent's performance with knowledgeable affirmations of the truths he portrayed.

The playwright/performer's job as a drama teacher in a Boston public school meant he had a day full of kids ranging in age from kindergarten to eighth grade. His first inclination was to be their friend, identifying himself as "Mr. Maurice" and seating kids in a circle. (The simple set–white, orange and blue tiled floor, backed by orange piping suggesting a wall, a doorway, and occasionally framing a whiteboard–designed by Cristina Todesco.) Parent slips in and out of the role of recalcitrant, obstreperous children, evoking a lot of laughter and knowing chuckles. Before long, he recharacterizes himself as "Mr. Parent," seating the kids in a more orderly manner and channeling his stern mother, who wanted him to become an engineer and maybe a part-time musician; his Haitian father, who broadly advised him; and a gay uncle, who welcomed him to the "family" before Parent was fully out.

When he flips to the acting side of his life, we learn about Parent's struggles (he auditioned–unsuccessfully–to be a hyena in the Broadway production of The Lion King) and then his successes in roles ranging from Tony Kushner's Angels in America and Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun to Dominique Morisseau's Skeleton Crew. At moments, with skillful lighting effects (designed by Karen Perlow), we witness the range and depth of his acting skill, including a fight scene from Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida in which a moment of distraction leads to a fat lip–which grosses out his students the next day.

Parent spent much of his downtime backstage during his rehearsals and performances regaling other actors with tales of kids from his classroom. Megan Sandberg-Zakian, the director of Skeleton Crew, witnessed his animated storytelling and urged him to put some of that material together in a show. Parent collaborated with playwright Melinda Lopez and Sandberg-Zakian on this script for his first ever one-man show, which debuted in Boston.

While Parent's performance demonstrates that he could be a stand-up comedian or a brilliant impressionist, he pushes his show beyond that. It was suggested that he might educate audiences about systemic racism that plagues numerous inner-city public schools. His classroom was in a school labeled as "under-performing," largely a product of insufficient funding and resources as a result of ongoing, de facto segregation. Parent truly becomes a teacher for the audience as his students. He delivers a lesson asking questions, drawing diagrams on the whiteboard, and offering convincing background on how America's current educational systems have set up Black and brown people for failure. While many of his points are illustrated by the circumstances in Boston and Massachusetts, Parent has familiarized himself enough with details of similar circumstances in Cincinnati and Ohio to bring these messages with even greater immediacy to Playhouse audiences.

He eventually decided to step away from his classroom career to focus on acting. But it's evident that Parent's decision resulted in some still-felt personal guilt. His performance's final moments are dedicated to his recollections of kids he shared time with and a suggestion that he's proud of his impact on them. His praise for dedicated teachers is heartfelt.

Mr. Parent is a highly entertaining 90 minutes, with the actor inhabiting numerous characters. It also will open your eyes to some of the troubling inequities in public education. That's a lot of work for one guy, but Maurice Emmanuel Parent is more than up to the task.

Mr. Parent runs through October 6, 2024, at Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, 962 Mt. Adams Circle, Eden Park, adjacent to Mt. Adams, Cincinnati OH. For tickets and information, please visit cincyplay.com or call 513-421-3888.