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Exit Strategy
Righteously angry, riotously funny, and wise to the tensions between abstract policy and lived experience, Ike Holter's play Exit Strategy centers on vivid, unforgettable characters struggling to maintain faith in a vocation that is being determinedly undermined.
Drawing from the headlines, Exit Strategy is set in Chicago and tells the story of a fictional public high school slated for closure at the end of the year. Despite funding cuts, bureaucrats run amok, apathy, and a rodent infestation, a small, multiracial group of teachers launch a last-minute effort to save the school, and put their careers, futures, and safety in the hands of a fast-talking administrator who may be in over his head. The tenuous situation also raises fears and anxieties among students, and within the volcanic neighborhood that is home to the school.
Holter has said that Exit Strategy was inspired by the 2013 mass closure of forty-nine Chicago public schools, which displaced nearly 12,000 children—the majority of directly impacted students were African American and Latinx. Hailed as "riveting," "sharp," and "richly metaphoric" by critics, the play indicts how we educate our children in big American cities, and shows why gaps between haves and have-nots continue to grow.
Exit Strategy is one of seven plays in Ike Holter's cycle of works set in Chicago or Chicago-inspired neighborhoods.
Drawing from the headlines, Exit Strategy is set in Chicago and tells the story of a fictional public high school slated for closure at the end of the year. Despite funding cuts, bureaucrats run amok, apathy, and a rodent infestation, a small, multiracial group of teachers launch a last-minute effort to save the school, and put their careers, futures, and safety in the hands of a fast-talking administrator who may be in over his head. The tenuous situation also raises fears and anxieties among students, and within the volcanic neighborhood that is home to the school.
Holter has said that Exit Strategy was inspired by the 2013 mass closure of forty-nine Chicago public schools, which displaced nearly 12,000 children—the majority of directly impacted students were African American and Latinx. Hailed as "riveting," "sharp," and "richly metaphoric" by critics, the play indicts how we educate our children in big American cities, and shows why gaps between haves and have-nots continue to grow.
Exit Strategy is one of seven plays in Ike Holter's cycle of works set in Chicago or Chicago-inspired neighborhoods.
- GenresPlays
82 pages, Paperback
First published September 15, 2018
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
February 16, 2020
There were four things which prevented me from thoroughly enjoying reading this play: First, it focused specifically on a Chicago-area concern (the closure of underperforming, largely ethnic, schools) that I had neither any knowledge of, or, TBH, much interest in. Secondly, most scenes would start in the middle of some action, and it usually took me several minutes to figure out what was even going on, which was frustrating. Thirdly, the character breakdown should have helpfully pointed out the ethnicity of each of the characters - two whom I assumed were black from their dialogue turned out to be Latinx, while it also took me awhile to figure out the two administrators were (apparently) white. These would obvs. not be a problem in production, but.... And lastly (spoiler alert!) ... I could REALLY have done without the character who committed suicide in the first scene coming back as a 'ghost' later on. :-(
That aside, the characters and dialogue were mostly sharp, although I've never been in a school where such foul language was the norm amongst teachers. And the relationship between the two gay characters was refreshingly different. But this didn't really make me want to see the play, and my ultimate response was kind of a shrugged 'meh'.
That aside, the characters and dialogue were mostly sharp, although I've never been in a school where such foul language was the norm amongst teachers. And the relationship between the two gay characters was refreshingly different. But this didn't really make me want to see the play, and my ultimate response was kind of a shrugged 'meh'.
August 1, 2024
Really really strong play, the overlapping dialogue was hard to read at times. The characters were the best part to me they came alive off the page.
September 18, 2021
This is pretty fuckin' great.
There's another 4-star review on GoodReads that doesn't like the ghost character and doesn't like that many of the scenes begin in medias res, but I especially liked those qualities. The appearance of the ghost so late in the play really took me by surprise, and it reminded me just how deeply felt her presence was in the space, even after she was gone. The dialogue is excellent; the characters are beautifully drawn; and the whole thing just moves toward tragedy but in a way that doesn't make that tragedy feel inevitable, that doesn't allow the realist form to do the thing Brecht said realism does – make everything feel as though it were bound to happen and couldn't have turned out differently.
Yes, Exit Strategy is a realist drama, but it is an enlivened, dynamic realism that seems to me to elevate the form high above the complacent nonsense of the realism of someone like Richard Nelson. Ike Holter needs his play to be realism because it's about reality in Chicago and to move this narrative into the realm of the poetic would do an injustice to the subject matter. This is a very good, exciting, get-out-there-and-light-some-shit-on-fire play.
There's another 4-star review on GoodReads that doesn't like the ghost character and doesn't like that many of the scenes begin in medias res, but I especially liked those qualities. The appearance of the ghost so late in the play really took me by surprise, and it reminded me just how deeply felt her presence was in the space, even after she was gone. The dialogue is excellent; the characters are beautifully drawn; and the whole thing just moves toward tragedy but in a way that doesn't make that tragedy feel inevitable, that doesn't allow the realist form to do the thing Brecht said realism does – make everything feel as though it were bound to happen and couldn't have turned out differently.
Yes, Exit Strategy is a realist drama, but it is an enlivened, dynamic realism that seems to me to elevate the form high above the complacent nonsense of the realism of someone like Richard Nelson. Ike Holter needs his play to be realism because it's about reality in Chicago and to move this narrative into the realm of the poetic would do an injustice to the subject matter. This is a very good, exciting, get-out-there-and-light-some-shit-on-fire play.
April 30, 2023
FOR LISTING PURPOSES ONLY
I actually read Put Your House in Order by Ike Holter, but that does not appear to be listed on Goodreads and I can't seem to add it, either. I just like to keep track of my books, and since this is the closest thing to doing so, I'm including Exit Strategy instead.
I actually read Put Your House in Order by Ike Holter, but that does not appear to be listed on Goodreads and I can't seem to add it, either. I just like to keep track of my books, and since this is the closest thing to doing so, I'm including Exit Strategy instead.
March 25, 2019
Reminded me of Break
February 23, 2023
Shocking and sad. It shows the truths of schools shutting down due to numerous reasons: administration, students, local gangs, gentrification. Definitely would love to watch this play live.
January 5, 2025
One of the strongest plays in the Rightlynd saga
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews