By Daily Press staff
With the college application season underway, “Early Decision,” author, playwright, TV and film writer David T. Levinson’s new play at a local arts complex explores some of the “craziness” surrounding a process that has become par for the course in Los Angeles and elsewhere in the USA.
Playing to full houses and recently extended, “Early Decision” is hitting a social nerve, successfully raising important and probing questions about the country’s education system, and why and how we pursue life’s decisions.
Examples of the “craziness” include: the exorbitant amounts of money that parents are spending on tutors, SAT and other types of test prep, summer trips around the world to engage in community service designed to “pad” a child’s resume and give him the edge when applying to college and parents mortgaging their retirement in order to put their children through an elite college.
The high costs of this intense competition to get into one’s “college of choice” raises deeper questions about the value of a college education in general. This “crazy” competition, and the costs involved, now infiltrates not just the college application process, but commences at the beginning of a child’s education, with intense competition and all sorts of expensive preparatory courses and coaches for kids applying to middle school, junior high and high school, even kindergarten.
Borne out of Levinson’s personal experiences with his own child’s middle school application process, “Early Decision” explores the excesses of the contemporary college application process and its effect on the family and community, via the fresh lens of public theater. When a college-bound high school student decides that she’s not going to apply for college, the effect on her family, friends and community is comical, surprising and thought-provoking.
The play runs through Dec. 4 on Fridays and Saturdays at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday at 7 p.m. at the Edgemar Center for the Arts, 2437 Main St. For reservations, call (310) 392-7327. Free orchestra concert to honor Stalvey’s legacy
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on November 18, 2005. Read the original PDF.