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The Daily Cardinal Est. 1892
Saturday, June 21, 2025

Play has little Room for improvement

Drinking, smoking, self-mutilation, school shootings and teacher-student affairs. Few plays include even half of these issues, especially a play that all takes place in one room. Bartell Theatre's ""The Faculty Room"" is a play about three teachers and the unique experiences they go through in one school year. 

 

The audience is first introduced to Zoe Bartholomew (Martinique Barthel), a sarcastic theater teacher who is best friends with co-worker Adam Younger. Adam (George Gonzalez) is a witty and brutally honest English teacher who is much more used to the flow of Madison-Fuerey High than the dorky Carver Durand (Michael Herman), a history teacher who transferred from a school in the city.  

 

The play focuses on the developing relationships these teachers have with each other as well as the often inappropriate ones they have with their students. Adam has a ""girlfriend"" who is a student he favors and even enjoys Thanksgiving dinner with, while Zoe's obsession with her ""boyfriend,"" Rafael, becomes progressively more serious throughout the play. 

 

Zoe becomes the most interesting character because of her erratic behavior that mimics a teenage girl. She believes that she and Rafael are soulmates and begins to dress in baggy clothes, eat junk food and more seriously, cut herself to relieve emotional pain. 

 

The characters make people laugh, but they also make them think about what teachers are really like. Teachers sculpt the minds of the future, yet Adam portrays a teacher as someone who brings alcohol in a flask to work, smokes pot and picks a favorite student—and this is just inside the faculty room. Although this behavior doesn't seem that out of the ordinary for other people, teachers are often put on a pedestal because of their life-altering job. People often forget that teachers have regular lives just like everyone else, and they have a lot to deal with, whether it is concerning a troubled student or a problem in their personal lives. 

 

While the issues are a little over-dramatized, the small theater makes it more personal and believable for the audience. And even though the play only takes place in one room, so much happens that it is easy to forget you are only hearing one of the teachers recap an event that happened. After listening to these funny and often heart-wrenching stories, the faculty room becomes a comfort for the audience just as it is for the teachers, and neither wants to leave by the end.

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