Actress and playwright Nilaja Sun is bringing her Obie Award-winning solo show “No Child …” to MTSU’s Student Union Ballroom Thursday, March 26, for a free public performance.

Nilaja Sun

The teaching artist, a native New Yorker, will begin her performance at 7 p.m. March 26. You can find a searchable campus map with parking details at http://tinyurl.com/MTSUParking14-15.

Sun created “No Child …” in 2004 via a commission from the Epic Theatre Ensemble, where she was the first artistic associate.

Her one-woman play is based on her experiences as a teaching artist in the New York City school system, and in it she depicts students, educators, parents and staffers struggling to learn and guide others in a troubled public school system.

Her multilayered presentation depicts a young artist’s attempts to teach a class of young high-schoolers about “Our Country’s Good,” the 1988 Timberlake Wertenbaker play about the real-life 18th century officer who put on a performance of a 1706 comedy with a group of Australian convicts. Both “Our Country’s Good” and Sun’s play focus on the ways theater can lift up unsettled people and communities.

You can watch an excerpt from “No Child …” that includes Sun’s comments on her work below.

Sun won the 2007 Off-Broadway, or Obie, Theater Award for her performance in “No Child …” as well as 16 other theater awards and the Best One-Person Show at the U.S. Comedy Arts Festival in Aspen.

Along with her solo show, Sun’s theater credits include “Einstein’s Gift,” “Pieces of the Throne” and “Time and the Conways.” She has also been seen on “Louie,” “30 Rock,” “Law and Order: SVU,” as Detective Gloria Hubbard in the film “The International” and on AMC’s “Rubicon.”

MTSU’s Virginia Peck Trust Fund, the Department of Speech and Theatre and the Women’s and Gender Studies Program are presenting Sun’s performance. For more information, contact Dr. Claudia Barnett at claudia.barnett@mtsu.edu.

— Gina E. Fann (gina.fann@mtsu.edu)