If you’re a critic of the Bush administration’s "No Child Left Behind" education policy, or if you want to see an electrifying actress spread her wings, think about attending the Pillsbury House Theatre’s production of "No Child...," a one-woman play that opens this weekend in Minneapolis.

The play was written and first performed in New York by Nilaja Sun, who based it on her teaching experiences at Martin Luther King Jr. High School in a beaten-down area of the Bronx. It’s about 70 minutes of one actress portraying more than a dozen roles, from students to teacher to security guards and others -- all created under the watchful eye of a janitor who is narrating like the stage manager in “Our Town.”

In a plays-within-plays device, the 10th-grade students at the school are rehearsing and performing Timberlake Wertenbaker’s play, "Our Country’s Good," which is about Australian prisoners putting on a show. They relate easily, since going to school involves passing through metal-detection machines, scrutiny by security guards and armed police officers, plus random “wanding.”

That’s to get into a school where the walls are crumbling and the toilets don’t work. The janitor/narrator talks about "accountability" -- from the test-passing accountability provisions of No Child Left Behind to who’s accountable for young chances squandered. One New York reviewer wrote of Sun’s play: "She’s got a good story, and she tells it well -- making it, for instance, almost funnier than it has a right to be, considering the subject."

The actress performing in Pillsbury’s production is Sonja Parks, who has been lighting up local stages for a number of years. Theater Communications Group published a profile of Parks several years ago that you can read here.

"No Child ..." Friday through March 22. Pillsbury House Theatre, 35th Street and Chicago Avenue South. Online.