We Used to Put the Arts Where the Children Were

Here is something most people who know my work probably don’t know about me:

I grew up in Petersburg, Virginia.

So when people suggest that families simply aren’t putting their children into drama training anymore, or that they tease and ridicule young boys for their interest in drama, I hear the question a little differently.

Because I remember when drama training didn’t always require a family to go searching for it.

It was already there. And Petersburg gave us a powerful example of what that could produce.

Drama, music, school plays, church programs, talent shows, and community arts were part of growing up. You could encounter the arts before anybody knew whether you were particularly gifted at them. Our school talent shows were so regionally popular that students had to start showing student ids to get in. Everyone wanted to be in the audience.

We Knew Blair Underwood

Blair Underwood is ours.

Long before generations of Americans knew him from television, film, and Broadway, Petersburg knew his story.

Underwood attended Petersburg High School, where teacher Marie Maniego helped nurture his interest in the arts. Years later, he publicly thanked her while presenting at the Tony Awards, crediting her influence on his journey. He would go on to study drama at Carnegie Mellon.

That story meant something to us.

A child could look at Blair Underwood and understand that somebody who walked streets you knew, attended a local school and learned from a local teacher could become a major actor.

There was no need to imagine that talent belonged somewhere else.

And Then Hollywood Came to Petersburg

Years later, Blair Underwood returned to Petersburg to make Asunder.

I remember it. I watched scenes being filmed.

Local people were part of the production. Familiar places became movie locations. Suddenly filmmaking wasn’t some mysterious thing that only happened thousands of miles away in Hollywood.

It was happening in Petersburg.

Petersburg’s own Marva Hicks played Blair Underwood’s wife in the film.

She built the kind of career that reminds us why local arts training and exposure matter. Hicks became a recording artist, an accomplished Broadway performer, and a respected actress whose career stretched across music, theater, television, and film.

Her voice took her around the world. She performed as a backing vocalist with Michael Jackson and worked with other major artists, including Stevie Wonder. On Broadway, her credits included productions such as The Lion King, Caroline, or Change, and Motown: The Musical. She also built an extensive television and screen career.

And then there is a connection especially close to home.

Think about that for a minute.

Two Black performers from the same Virginia city grew up to establish substantial careers in the arts and then appeared together in a film made back home.

This is evidence of what can happen when talent meets exposure, training, teachers, stages, music, community, and opportunity.

That is why the places where children begin deserve our investment too.

That kind of experience teaches children something that statistics cannot.

Possibility has an address.

When a child sees cameras on a street she recognizes, actors coming out of buildings she knows and people from her own community participating in a production, the distance between them and me becomes a little shorter.

Petersburg Tried Something Else, Too

Tim and Daphne Maxwell Reid understood that possibility.

They invested in Petersburg and developed New Millennium Studios, a substantial film-production facility there. For a time, this small Virginia city had something communities all over America say they want: infrastructure capable of supporting film production outside Hollywood.

Think about the ecosystem that creates.

Actors need training.

Productions need camera operators.

Sets need builders.

Actors need hair and makeup.

Films need costume designers, electricians, sound technicians, caterers, editors, drivers, production assistants and administrators.

The arts aren’t merely about producing celebrities.

The arts produce work.

This Is Why I Push Back When We Blame Families

Today, we can look at declining participation in theatre and ask:

Why aren’t parents putting their children in drama classes?

But I want us to ask another question first:

Where did the drama classes go?

Where are the school plays?

Where are the community theatres?

Where are the affordable children’s programs?

Where is the teacher who notices the quiet little girl who becomes somebody completely different when she steps onto a stage?

Where is the teacher who realizes that the boy who cannot stop performing for his classmates isn’t necessarily a problem to control? Maybe he is a performer who needs somewhere appropriate to put all that wonderful energy.

We cannot remove opportunities from children’s neighborhoods and then blame their parents because children aren’t participating in them.

Gen X Remembers Something Different

For many of us, arts education was not some luxury experience reserved for children whose parents understood the entertainment industry.

You joined the school play. You sang in choir. You learned an instrument. You participated in the church Christmas program. Somebody handed you a script.

Somebody said, “Try this.” That little invitation could change a life.

And perhaps most importantly, the adults didn’t have to recognize the talent first.

Teachers helped recognize it. That is one of the great purposes of public education that we don’t talk about enough.

Schools don’t merely teach children what adults have decided they need to know.

At their best, schools discover things about children.

Talent Should Not Require Wealth to Be Discovered

There is something backwards about building an arts pipeline that requires parents to recognize talent, locate private instruction, understand professional training, pay hundreds or thousands of dollars and transport children across town before those children ever get the opportunity to find out whether they love performing.

Imagine applying that logic to reading.

Your child might be an extraordinary reader. Have you considered finding a private reading academy? No.

We put books in schools. We put teachers beside children. And then we discover readers.

Put stages beside children and we will discover actors.

Put instruments beside children and we will discover musicians.

Put cameras beside children and we will discover filmmakers.

Put paint beside children and we will discover artists.

Give them somewhere to practice badly, laugh, learn, try again and eventually become good.

And When Artists Make It, Imagine the Flex

This is also why I’ve been thinking differently about what successful artists leave behind.

Celebrity culture teaches us to count wealth in jewelry, houses, cars and clothes.

There is nothing inherently wrong with enjoying what you earned.

But imagine another kind of status.

“I made it, so 500 children in my hometown now have free theatre training.”

Now that’s something.

“I bought the old theatre.”

“I pay the drama teachers.”

“I built the rehearsal rooms.”

“I fund transportation so children can get home safely.”

“I brought professional actors back every summer to teach.”

“I created internships for teenagers interested in lighting, sound, costumes and film production.”

Maybe we should know those numbers too.

We know how many chains somebody owns. I want to know how many doors they opened.

Petersburg Taught Me It Can Be Done

I don’t have to imagine what happens when arts infrastructure reaches an ordinary community.

I have been on the stage since I was a little girl. Playing everything from a background singer singing about making Martin Luther King birthday a holiday, to a dancer to a chicken coming to a man in his dreams to try to convince him to vote, to a teacher in our school. (I saw her later. I was scared but she loved it.) And then, learning to write scripts in my senior year drama class. I was a quiet girl who loved the stage. As a hobby and for wellness, I have continued formal theater training.

I was the quiet kid. I didn’t come in with a visible “flair for drama.” For some reason, the teachers kept persuading and supporting me toward the spotlight. I was terrified and grew less so with their guidance and encouragement.

I think teachers are still like that. We only need to make sure that lawmakers put programs in the budget for our children.

I knew the pride surrounding Blair Underwood. I watched a 1999 movie being filmed in my hometown. Watched Petersburg people become part of it. Saw the beautiful and amazingly talented Debbie Morgan. Saw accomplished Black artists invest in the idea that filmmaking didn’t have to happen somewhere else.

So when someone tells me children aren’t getting arts training because today’s families simply aren’t interested, I’m going to keep asking about the system surrounding those families.

Because perhaps the children haven’t changed nearly as much as we think.

There are still little girls memorizing entire movies.

There are still boys making everybody laugh.

There are still children turning bedrooms into stages and phones into cameras.

There are still future actors, directors, playwrights, costume designers, cinematographers, dancers and composers sitting in American classrooms right now.

The talent did not disappear.

We stopped putting enough doors in front of it.

And Petersburg taught me something I still believe:

Put opportunity close enough for children to touch, and you may be surprised by who reaches for it.