Chicago Theater Beat | Feature | January 2, 2017
Top 10 Chicago Productions of 2016
"It’s not every day that one goes back to high school, but perhaps we should, even just for a few hours... However, Learning Curve took APTP’s originality to a whole new level... Learning Curve was an intense 100 minutes, and an unforgettable triumph for the pioneering company." - Scotty Zacher

Chicago Sun-Times | Feature | December 21, 2016
Hedy Weiss’ best of Chicago theater 2016
"A wondrous, one-of-a-kind masterwork, the piece featured the unique alchemy of APTP’s extraordinarily skilled young performers, and evoked life in a Chicago high school in ways that were so real, yet so imaginative — so disturbing, and so life-confirming — that you wanted to grab hold of every politician and school bureaucrat and say: Experience this show, and then do something." - Hedy Weiss

NewCity Stage | Feature | December 15, 2016
Newcity’s Top 5 of Everything 2016: Stage
"To say that the choreographic and technical ambitions of “Learning Curve” are enormous would be a profound understatement... The “learning” in this outstanding and unforgettable production likely refers to the seemingly contradictory emphasis in academic environments on individuality and collective identities. But it can also refer to life itself, that place just beyond the doors and windows, which crawls ceaselessly forward. It is a vital reminder that for many people in our city and elsewhere, young or otherwise, the ongoing conversations on race, education and social justice are not simply theoretical. They are practical and of paramount importance." - Kevin Greene

Chicago Tribune | Feature | December 9, 2016
Counting down the best of Chicago theater in 2016
"The extraordinarily frank work of the Albany Park Theatre Project, an organization of young artists that takes great care of the whole kid, is well known in Chicago. But "Learning Curve," a show that occupied a real, shuttered school and did more to impress upon adults the importance of public education than all the TED Talks and policy statements in the world, took things to a whole new level. Immersive theater can be a cliche. Here, it was transformed into a pulsing reality that will live on in the memory and keep reminding us of the young lives changed for good (or ill) by those endless adult squabbles over educational policy." - Chris Jones

The New Yorker | Review | December 7, 2016
An Immersive Play That Transports You To A Chicago Public High School
"Learning Curve' is both a scathing indictment of a defective system and a tender study of the awesome awakening that makes being a teen-ager so frightening and fun. It’s rare that such a public conversation about education is facilitated by students, the silent shareholders. For audience members far removed from adolescence and professionally uninvolved in the day-to-day public-school machine, the production’s intensely personal portrait of a modern urban school district is startling." - Brian Schaefer

Chicago Tribune | Feature | November 11, 2016
This Week's Critics' Picks
"Most high school drama you'll have seen will have inhabited merely a literal plane; the sophisticated "Learning Curve" embraces the symbolic, the inner life of the kid, the deeper context. It is not to be missed, if you can snag a ticket. " - Chris Jones

American Theatre Magazine | Feature | October 21, 2016
Teaching Moments in Albany Park’s ‘Learning Curve’
"...Learning Curve, while very much about urban public education, also has moments that resonate with anyone who attended high school... that sense of empathy and trust is important for many reasons, and is also crucial to bridging gaps between the young cast and the audience." - Kerry Reid

Backstage | Interview | September 14, 2016
Building an Empowered (and Successful) Youth Theater Ensemble
"That phenomenon is taking place most afternoons and evenings between now and Dec. 17 at a Chicago high school. The show’s creators? Local teens. Its cast? Local teens. Its real-life stories, revolving around the likelihood of earning a high school diploma in Chicago today? Delivered by those teens, such stories resonate on more than just a theatrical level." - Jack Smart

Time Out Chicago | Review | August 12, 2016
Learning Curve
"It’s easy enough to marvel at the technical achievement of the youngsters keeping this massive mechanism moving smoothly night after night. But it’s more important to absorb what they’re asking us to experience of the reality they and their fellow students—and teachers, and administrators, and parents—face day to day and year to year." - Kris Vire

Chicago Tribune | Review | August 1, 2016
A day in the life of a public school in immersive 'Learning Curve'
"Learning Curve' teaches many things, not the least of which is just how difficult it can be to get through a day in an inner-city school, mostly because students have so little power. We forget that as adults, even if we feel we have little power ourselves. We similarly forget a life in which we're constantly in danger of being revealed in all of our ignorance — in my adult life, I avoid being put on the spot assiduously; I'd far rather put people on the spot that be stuck there myself. High school kids are put there all the time — usually without regard to personal circumstance." - Chris Jones

Chicago Tribune | Feature | July 29, 2016
'Learning Curve' puts you smack in the middle of a Chicago public school day
"It's the coolest day of school ever. Because Ellen Gates Starr High School is a work of imagination." - Morgan Greene

Chicago Sun-Times | Review | July 21, 2016
APTP’s ‘Learning Curve’ moves through a Chicago public school
"Think of it as a fantasia on life in a Chicago public high school, performed throughout the three floors of an actual school building by actors who are either still in high school or have just begun college... restless students pass notes, deploy paper missiles and suddenly erupt in counterpointed movement, clambering up, over and around their well-worn combination chair/desks in choreography that suggests escape more than rebellion. "- Hedy Weiss