I want to take you to Hill City, KS. It's a small town located on the wild plains of western Kansas. The population is less the 1,500 people. It may be hard to believe that towns this size exist, but I assure you, they do.I know about Hill City because my first play, Allie In Wonderland, was first performed there. I wrote it, five years ago now, for some of these kids. The two in the picture here, were part of the original Allie cast.The Absolutely True Story of Tom Sawyer According To Becky Thatcher was also performed there for the first time. I completed the script to that show less then a block away from the high school. I've eaten lunch there, performed there, lived there for three months. It's a town I dearly love, but at the moment, I'm saddened by.In a town that small, I'm sure you can imagine how small the school is. According to http://www.high-schools.com, total enrollment is 166. Of those 166 students, 36 are seniors. Tonight, Feb 25, 2014, was their last home basketball game of the season.In many schools across the state and the nation, the last home game is often recognized as "Senior Night." I've seen it at high school football games, basketball games, etc. It's a chance for the coaches, faculty, parents and fans to cheer and recognize the hard working athletes, cheerleaders, sports managers in their last home game. The two young people above, Morgan McCullough and Katie Bradshaw, are Hill City High School seniors. But they are not part of "the team", they are members of the band. And tonight, at their last home game as pep band members they did not get recognized alongside their classmates.And here's the kicker, they were promised they would be recognized and then that offer was rescinded. They were told they COULD be recognized at their spring concert. Which, according to Katie, has "minimum to no attendance" and which she has "never seen" happen. So what did these brave students do? As you can see, they stood up and made themselves recognized.Let me put this out here right now, I have no problems with sports. I think sports has their place in high schools as much as music, theater, and the arts. As I'm typing this, I'm wearing a tee-shirt recognizing a Big 12 collegiate team, a hoodie from an area high school, and a Major League baseball cap. I got to sporting events. I even played sports for a little while in middle school and in high school.But what I do have a problem with is athletes getting greater recognition then others. Weather they be players, managers or cheerleaders, they are NOT more important then their classmates who work just as hard, put in as many hours, with none of the glory and recognition. I fear and feel that this brings forth a culture of entitlement that carries on into later adulthood.Do you want to know what this band and their members have done for Hill City High School and USD 281? From Katie, We have played pep band since sixth grade, long before the seniors who were recognized tonight played on that court, before the cheerleaders wore those uniforms, before the managers worked with the coaches. I have never ridden on a class float during the homecoming parade, because I have always marched. I have played in half times at college football games. I have taken music to contests and played in honor bands. I have played with Dallas Brass. I've played jazz band on top of a mountain in Aspen at a ski resort.These band members were ambassadors for their school, but more then that, they were torchbearers and played as important a role in athletics as the athletes on the field or the court. In Biblical times, musicians often preceded the armies into battle and in beginning in the 16th century in Europe, armies would often have a drum and fife player who would play uplifting music to encourage the troops, as well as be used to convey orders. What is the purpose of a high school pep band but to uplift and encourage the crowd of spectators and the athletes. They work in conjunction with cheerleaders often times.I'm writing about this, not because Morgan and Katie are friends of mine (although they are), not because I'm disappointed in a school or a town (although I am), but because this is symptomatic of our culture. We like to separate the "jocks" from the "geeks". We like to pigeonhole and ghettoize groups of people. We place a disproportionate amount of praise on our student athletes while marginalizing and ignoring our student artists. I graduated high school almost 20 years ago, from a much larger high school, and felt the same thing. Student artists get the shaft while student athletes get the praise. I had hoped that our society had progressed beyond that.I've blogged about this before, but it bears repeating; arts in education is vital to making our country better. Studies have "found that learning music facilitates learning other subjects and enhances skills that children inevitably use in other areas. “A music-rich experience for children of singing, listening and moving is really bringing a very serious benefit to children as they progress into more formal learning,” says Mary Luehrisen, executive director of the National Association of Music Merchants (NAMM) Foundation, a not-for-profit association that promotes the benefits of making music." (PBS, 2013). And according to Fran Smith in a 2009 article on Edutopia, the website of The George Lucas Educational Foundation (GLEF), "Involvement in the arts is associated with gains in math, reading, cognitive ability, critical thinking, and verbal skill. Arts learning can also improve motivation, concentration, confidence, and teamwork."Smith goes on to cite a 2005 Rand Corporation study which states, "can connect people more deeply to the world and open them to new ways of seeing," meaning, basically, the arts can make a person's life BETTER because they [the arts] are sweetening that person's life, causing them to create closer social connections and bonds.Music education can help with verbal skills, increase IQ, develop Spatial-Temporal skills. The brain works harder, causing increased test scores. Theater education can help with social anxiety and confidence, art education helps with motor skills and decision making. The studies are out there for those who want to look.Art Education plays a vital role and instead of ignoring those students, instead of promising something and then revoking it, the Hill City School District (and by default ALL schools) should be CELEBRATING our student artists.I can't do much, but I can applaud these Senior students and I can write about this, and I can encourage you to contact the Hill City School District and let them know of your disappointment in them.They are on Twitter, tweet at them. Tweet this article at them. Share this article on your Facebook pages and post it on their Facebook page. Hashtag it #Weareseniorstoo so I can track it.They have a website with all their contact information. Let them know that ignoring their senior student artists is unacceptable.If you know of other stories like this, contact me via Twitter or my Facebook page or leave a comment below and I'll continue to bring this life. It's time we took a cue from Morgan and Katie and take a stand.See More

Until yesterday, I hadn't blogged on my personal website in weeks, it has been even longer since I blogged on here. A strange combination of not enough time, nothing to say and a general lethargy had kept me from blogging. I wanted to blog, I knew I needed to, but I just had no urge. To be fair, it wasn't just my blogging that has suffered lately. Almost all writing has been down. I've entered a few contests, but most of what I've been writing has been on the editing stage of things; tweaking an old script, cutting here, adding there. I wrote, directed, acted, and produced a show in April for someone and felt they abused my good nature and that killed a lot of momentum that had been building. I've had ideas but no real drive to write since then.Then I had an accident at work and have been unable to work for the past couple of days. I found myself with time on my hands. And, I still didn't write. Until yesterday. I was going through my Kindle, looking for something to read when I saw that I had finished Crystal Smith-Connelly's latest short play collection Never Trust An Angel And Other Plays several days prior. I had reviewed her previous work, For I Am Zeus, and knew I should review her new work as well.The words seemed to flow out of my fingers, opening a well-spring that had seemingly been dammed up. No, I didn't sit down and write the next great Neil Simon comedy or Eugene O'Neill drama. I didn't instantly become Arthur Miller, Harold Pinter or Lanford Wilson. But I had ideas and a drive to write.Born out of a review of a play I liked but didn't love.So yeah, blogging is weird.See More

I know I haven't blogged lately, between the massive amounts of snow Kansas has received in the past week and personal things, I just haven't had much to talk about it seems. Then I read this editorial from the Wichita Eagle about Kansas and the arts and it was time to speak and to blog.If you don't know, Kansas Governor Sam Brownback said in 2011 that the arts "were not a core service deserving of public dollars." This in turn prompted the Legislature to intervene. Now the Governor has proposed a $500,000 cut to the state arts budget by proposing a budget of $200,000 a year for the next two years. Governor Brownback also eliminated the Kansas Arts Commission and its nearly 45 years of experience in arts advocacy. In its place the state created the new Kansas Creative Arts Industries Commission. The KCAIC has two main programs; the Creative Economy Project Support and Creative Arts Industry Incentives and their main focus is on creating jobs and building public-private partnerships. However according to the Arts Advocacy group, Kansas Citizens for the Arts, "The new Kansas Creative Arts Industries Commission is not doing enough to support the arts in Kansas. No funds have been granted yet, with the funding year almost half over, and the proposed programs are not what artists and arts organizations have said they need."The KCAIC also seems to be in a state of disarray They held their first meeting in January and there is confusion about who answers to whom. And with this confusion and seemingly slowness to act, it doesn't look like Kansas will be able to restore the $1.2 million in annual funding from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Mid-America Alliance that we used to receive, anytime soon.The Governor's plans for the arts, and one he heavily touted, was a private organization called the Kansas Arts Foundation. Their vision statement states that they are...a unique charitable foundation that secures private funds and empowers Kansas Arts communities and talent, while impacting, inspiring and sustaining the future of the Arts culture for generations of Kansans to come.That's fantastic and we need more groups like this, private and governmental agencies working together. But so far they have had little to no impact. Last week they announced its first three grants, a staggering amount of $6,500 to three (deserving) groups.Why is this so important to me? In the past, I've blogged about the importance for using theater as a means of social and societal change, but I try to remain pretty apolitical on here because I know that there are people of all political stripes who visit my blog and I try to appease everyone but on this I must take a stand. I've seen first hand how theater can draw a shy kid into the light. I've seen how painting can be a cure for depression. I've seen poetry used as therapy. I could go on and on but I won't. I'll also say I've seen colleges struggle to get money to put on quality shows and be more selective on who and how many or drop their theater departments completely in lieu of channeling that funding elsewhere thus denying students an opportunity to experience and learn something news and denying a community the chance to see something they've never seen before. I've seen community theaters using borrowed venues and hours of volunteer services struggle to have their work recognized by more than a handful or even a couple hundred people in a town with a population of almost 21,000 people. Support from the state, even in the form of small grants, could help these groups in so many ways.So why should we support the arts? According to the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies, there are 4 good reasons why the arts make a good public sector investment.• ECONOMIC DRIVERS: The arts create jobs and produce tax revenue. A strong arts sector isan economic asset that stimulates business activity, attracts tourism revenue, retains a highquality work force and stabilizes property values. The arts have been shown to be a successfuland sustainable strategy for revitalizing rural areas, inner cities and populations struggling withpoverty.• EDUCATIONAL ASSETS: The arts foster young imaginations and facilitate children’s success inschool. They provide the critical thinking, communications and innovation skills essential to aproductive 21st-century work force.• CIVIC CATALYSTS: The arts create a welcoming sense of place and a desirable quality of life.The arts also support a strong democracy, engaging citizens in civic discourse, dramatizingimportant issues and encouraging collective problem solving.• CULTURAL LEGACIES: The arts preserve unique culture and heritage, passing a state’sprecious cultural character and traditions along to future generationsAnd they have the research to back up their claims.I've gone on longer then I intended to on this blog post, but this is something that I'm passionate in supporting. Garrison Keillor once said "People don't come to America for our airports, people don't come to America for our hotels… they come for our culture, real and imagined.” It's time we remind our lawmakers of that.If you live in Kansas, I urge you to take part in Arts Day At The Capitol. That doesn't mean you have to drive to Topeka and be a part (though it would be great if you could), it means calling your state congressman and senator and tell them "I support the arts!" Let your voice be heard.IMPORTANT LINKS TO FOLLOW!Kansas State LegislatureGovernor Brownback's TwitterGovernor Brownback's FacebookKansas Citizens for the ArtsKansas Arts FoundationNational Assembly of State Arts AgenciesWichita Eagle editorial that provided much of the research into this.See More