The second show I ever directed as a high school drama teacher was The Diary of Anne Frank. It was a bold choice, though born more of ignorance than audacity. The material would challenge even a veteran drama teacher; in spring 1998, I was a first-year public educator.
Fortunately, I had a gifted actor for Anne. But I cast this show when my “educating through a crisis” filing cabinet was quite bare. While the girl playing Anne’s sister, Margot, was a kind, soft-spoken junior whom I will call Sarah, I was shaken when one of Sarah’s teachers approached me after hearing she had been cast, exclaiming, “I was so happy for her. I wonder how auditions went for her, since she can’t read?”
Hmm. I somehow missed that tiny detail.
My panic level reached stratospheric heights. What now? How much time would I need to prepare Sarah, apart from the rest of the cast, and would this split focus affect the show? Did I just set her up to fail? Did I have other bankable skills in case of a necessary career shift?
As time went on, I learned this was a huge deal—but not for me. Sarah struggled through rehearsals and remained a bit aloof from her peers. But she just needed time to warm. As days passed, Sarah’s confidence level steadied, then soared, until she finally nailed down the few lines she had. Her ability to settle into the more easily forgotten Frank sister had a muted brilliance.
Opening night finally arrived. A special present that took eight weeks to wrap was now ready to be opened. If we had done our job, shock and tears awaited parents who may have wondered why the hell their kids had to be at the theatre so much. For her part, Sarah accomplished the thing that had never been guaranteed. When the performance ended and the company dashed to the lobby to meet their adoring public, Sarah sought out her mom first. They both raced toward each other, embracing firmly, then sobbing uncontrollably.
“We invite every elementary school to come and see our children’s show...my kids love it; they feel like rock stars."
Over the years, I’ve acquired many similar anecdotes (horror stories as well). Overcoming adversity early taught me that achieving “success” in a high school theatre program is a varied phenomenon, often based on location and socioeconomics. Affluent communities and private schools offer pathways into college and professional training programs that public schools struggle to provide. Yet many thriving public school programs are staffed by incredible teachers who’ve bucked those trends, often in communities that give higher priority to their sports programs.
The International Thespian Society, the only honor society for middle and high school drama students, is all about ensuring that theatre kids remain an equally high priority. Thespian, or ITS, troupes are represented at schools across the country, boasting more than 2.4 million inductions since 1929. Every year, these teens bounce to state festivals to engage in drama-paloozas, with smaller regional satellite gatherings offered elsewhere throughout the year. Performances, plays, keynote speakers, and competitions are all held under the banner of the Educational Theatre Association (EdTA), the parent organization for the ITS, with the Super Bowl of high school drama, the International Thespian Festival, held annually in the summer at Indiana University in Bloomington.
“We define a successful program as one that is fully sustainable,” said Jennifer Katona, executive director of EdTA, “meaning it has been embedded into the school culture, so the administration provides the space and the resources and the budget that is needed.”
Katona was part of her high school thespian troupe, taught middle school theatre in Brooklyn, and worked as a teaching artist for many organizations, including the New Victory Theater, a company on 42nd Street in New York City that focuses on young audiences. For Katona, there is no back seat for the theatre program.
“The school play’s announcements are made alongside the football game announcements,” Katona said. “It equals everything else at a school, embedded in the culture of the school and of the community. Anything above and beyond that is spectacular.”
On a national level, major awards programs have become the North Star for serious high school drama kids. One of the most prestigious, the Jimmy Awards, has been given out since 2009, with household theatre names like Eva Noblezada (Miss Saigon, Hadestown), Reneé Rapp (Mean Girls), and Justin Cooley (Kimberly Akimbo) having gone far in the process. Th e most recent winners, Texas native Damson Chola Jr. and Michigander Gretchen Shope, could walk onto a Broadway stage right now and get nightly standing ovations. (Want proof? Both of their hair-raising performances are available on YouTube.)
Meanwhile, on a local level, Stephanie Black Daniels aims for a different kind of star. She has taught high school drama for 32 years, changing lives through theatre at Rock Hill High School in South Carolina for the past 21. According to U.S. News and World Report, her school’s minority enrollment is 57 percent, with 55 percent of the students considered economically disadvantaged. The bright stage lights in her theatre are no competition for Friday night lights, the American South being a bastion of gridiron glory. Many of her students did not grow up with live theatre in their lives until they met Daniels, who exudes Southern charm and gentle charisma.
Daniels has spent many years making sure special experiences are what her students have in her corner of the campus. It’s work that isn’t always met with a great box office return, which can be frustrating. Still, her troupe is a regular presence at statewide competitions, taking home top honors multiple times.
Daniels works tirelessly to ensure her troupes represent the demographics of the school itself. One of the great highlights of her career in reflecting that commitment came in 2001, when she took 15 students from her previous school in Greenwood, South Carolina, to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in Scotland.
“I had kids that had never been outside the state of South Carolina,” said Daniels, whose voice trembled and softened at the memory. “I had kids who had never been on a plane, never seen any other part of the world, and it was important to me to provide that experience.”
“I think that’s the Trojan horse: getting kids in high school speaking the language of these contemporary writers."
Closer to home, her aim is to do the best shows possible. This means ensuring that students in the area, who are often witnessing their first theatre production, have a quality experience.
“We invite every elementary school to come and see our children’s show,” Daniels said. “I announce it on a Monday, and by Tuesday afternoon, I’m usually sold out. When we bring them in, my kids love it; they feel like rock stars. When I have a student come up to me and say they saw Alice in Wonderland in the fifth grade, and they couldn’t wait to get to high school to take drama—I mean, that’s why you do what you do, for that right there.”
While Daniels aims high, she is under no illusion that she’s sending students off to collect their Tony Awards. Some programs, backed by higher funding and boasting successful alumni, do have students daring to dream of the neon lights on Broadway. Isabella Villasis, 18, spent much of her young career in lead roles at Children’s Musical Theater San Jose (CMTSJ), a big-budget community theatre whose boards have been trod by the likes of Alex Brightman (School of Rock, Beetlejuice), Will Brill (Tony winner for Stereophonic), and Isabella Esler (the recent Beetlejuice tour). While everyone who auditions is cast in a CMTSJ show, the true battle is over the lead roles, which come with lavalier microphones, program bios, and clout.
Villasis spent her freshman year at a public high school doing more basic plays. What she craved was a chance to experience a high school version of CMTSJ. So, with her parents’ blessing, Villasis left public school for the rigors of Archbishop Mitty High School in San Jose, which offers intensive drama and academic programs.
“Mitty puts a spotlight on the performing arts, and not just theatre,” Villasis said. “The choir and dance teams are so present. Being surrounded by all that is a great chance to get more recognition and have the opportunity for awards.”
Mitty’s drama teacher is the even-keeled, soft-spoken Doug Santana, who has helmed the program for 22 years. Teaching drama at Mitty means multiple musicals, improv, sketch comedy, fundraising, and galas, as well as preparing kids for the pipeline into advanced training programs at the college level. The impressive alumni page includes performers with Broadway and film credits.
“Our program, and our shows, are competitive,” said Santana, relaxing in his office the morning of opening night of Mitty’s latest musical, The Drowsy Chaperone, last October. “Most kids who come here to do theatre know what they’re getting into, and there’s a lot of them doing that by choice. I think that makes them better, because they’re able to really be pushed.”
Mitty even offers an advanced class specifically designed to prepare students for college and professional theatre. Santana also maintained that at Mitty, previous stage experience is a plus, but not a guarantee.
“I think one misconception about us is that if you come in with 20 shows under your belt you have some sort of advantage,” he said. “It’s something you can build on, but we’ve also had many students who have found the arts later in their lives.”
Discovering theatre later is often the case for folks of color, who have historically been overlooked for leadership positions, marketing, and season selections at theatres, let alone for educational opportunities. After the murder of George Floyd and the We See You, White American Theater movement, these disparities received renewed attention.
In the 2021-22 school year, the Next Narrative Monologue Competition kicked off, aimed at centering Black professional playwrights and uplifting young theatre students of color. Inspired in part by the long-standing August Wilson Monologue Competition, Next Narrative is the brainchild of Jamil Jude, artistic director of True Colors Theatre Company in Atlanta, which hosted the Wilson competition since it was founded there, by then-artistic director Kenny Leon, in 2007. Next Narrative pairs working playwrights with high school performers, who are then mentored in their regions. Participating regions send their top two finalists to New York City, with all expenses paid. The finalists participate in workshops with theatre professionals, see a Broadway show, and perform at Harlem’s historic Apollo Theatre. The top three winners also receive cash prizes.
For Jude, who grew up on the work of August Wilson and his contemporaries, Next Narrative is a way to continue that legacy by lifting up new voices to expand the American theatre canon, all while feeding a teen pipeline that will fill college programs, professional stages, and audiences well into the future.
“There are a hundred contemporary writers and only one Mr. Wilson, right?” asked Jude. “I think that’s the Trojan horse: getting kids in high school speaking the language of these contemporary writers they will ultimately go out and audition for and give them a leg up, we hope. Getting that training in high school programs, and not leaving it up to the universities that unfortunately have been slow to incorporate more contemporary work in their offerings, is important.”
Next Narrative makes intuitive sense, said Meg O’Brien, director of education at Boston’s Huntington Theatre Company, which has been heavily involved with both monologue competitions. “These are writers in the American theatre currently, so they’re also writing about what it means to be Black in America today. We are able to provide students with arts learning that provides a brave space for them just to explore who they are and how to express themselves, while also providing them the text to analyze, dig into, and improve literacy.”
O’Brien started off at Huntington Theatre Company as education manager in 2008, before moving into her current role in 2017. In 2023, the Boston region saw its entrant, Sakura Rosenthal, win the national Next Narrative championship, and a $3,000 scholarship, with a piece titled Happiness by Rachel Lynett. In addition to highlighting and advancing young talent, the aim of NNMC is to maintain the freshness and contemporary sensibilities of today’s dramatic writers, all the better to make theatre relevant to today’s students.
“We have a lot of love for Shakespeare, obviously, but he’s old, he’s dead, he’s white, he’s British,” O’Brien said. “For teenagers today, there’s a really hard sell to get them to understand the universality of that text, just by starting out with basic history of who he was and where he lived.” The other thing that excites O’Brien about NNMC is when “our students choose to pursue the arts post-high school…It’s a dream and a joy.”
Even competitors who don’t choose the arts as a career are more likely to be lifelong theatregoers, which bodes well for the ecosystem as a whole. Writers, actors, and patrons of color are needed now more than ever, with perilous attrition in every corner of the industry. And a greater preponderance of stories by and about people of color means that trained and skilled writers and actors are needed to tell and interpret those stories.
These competitions may be audience builders in themselves. As Jude put it, “A lot of people who come to our high school monologue competition regional finals in Atlanta—that’s the first time they’re seeing a True Colors event. So now we can say, ‘Hey, remember that monologue you liked? It’s actually written by this person and their whole play will now be onstage.’”
Every high school theatre educator invites their students to examine the world in a new way through this ancient art form, in a pursuit that requires self-interrogation, maturity, and courage. The words can come from classic or contemporary text, but the skills required remain the same. Put another way: Late in The Diary of Anne Frank, Margot rebuffs Anne’s offer to join her and Peter for company, saying no for a simple reason. “I have a book,” Margot explains.
It is hard not to look back and think about that line, delivered by a kid who struggled to master the task of reading. Sarah, offering that line with delicious irony, didn’t throw away an opportunity to pen her own chapter as a teenage thespian. As so many teens have learned firsthand by stepping onto a worn-down high school stage, sometimes just a few words delivered to an audience can change a life in magical ways.
David John Chávez (he/him) is a regular theatre contributor to the San Jose Mercury News, San Francisco Chronicle, American Theatre magazine, and KQED (NPR/PBS affiliate), among other publications.
