While arts programs nationwide suffer due to pressures from the No Child Left Behind Act, the New York Times (access fee required) has detected an unusual trend toward increasingly extravagant (and costly) high school plays. For an Indiana school featured in the article “Supersizing the School Play,” theater has brought the impoverished surrounding community “a measure of pride, comparable only to that generated by the sports teams.”
The article also celebrates the teaching behind the shows that transforms students into “serious, confident, and even daring” apprentices. One drama teacher, for instance, “relates to his students in the slightly fierce, slightly indulgent way most good teachers do. He does what he can to keep even the most marginalized of them on board.”