University College, Arts NC State Host Helene-Themed High School Play

Throughout any given school year, NC State University Theatre’s Kennedy-McIlwee Studio theater holds dozens of performances that make audiences laugh, cry, feel, think and elicit a variety of emotions. 

On Jan. 8, the venue played host to a production that struck home for the audience, and the entire state of North Carolina, in a much different way. Arts NC State, one of the vibrant units housed in NC State’s University College, welcomed Playmakers class students from Watauga High School near Boone, North Carolina, to perform SURGE, a play the students and teachers crafted to demonstrate the experience of Watauga County and western North Carolina residents through the catastrophic flooding brought by Hurricane Helene last fall. 

It’s vitally important that we support the work of young artists not only on campus but also within our home state.

By hosting the performance through Arts NC State, University College allowed the Wolfpack community, as well as several dignitaries that included North Carolina Public Schools Superintendent Mo Green, Lieutenant Governor Rachel Hunt and nine members of the State Board of Education, including Chair Eric Davis and Vice Chair Alan Duncan, to experience this powerful story. 

“Theater is, at its heart, a collaborative art form,” said Arts NC State Interim Executive Director and University Theatre Director Joshua Reaves. “By its very nature, it depends on so many disciplines and professions to come together in order to tell stories. As a member of the North Carolina arts community, education ecosystem and North Carolina Theatre Conference, we simply played our part to uplift and support our fellow artists, students and theatre makers. It’s vitally important that we support the work of young artists not only on campus but also within our home state.”

Pivoting to a New Story

At Watauga High School, which is home to a robust theater program that includes eight acting classes, four theater technology classes, as well as student directing and film studies courses, Pioneer Playmakers is the sole audition-only class. 

Taught by Sarah Miller and Zach Walker, the course sees students craft productions to perform at the North Carolina Theater Conference High School Play Festival, and compete for regional and state championships. 

The final week of September 2024, the class was ready to get to work on its annual production for the conference. However, everything changed when life in the North Carolina mountains was upended by the devastating flooding Helene wrought. 

In Google Meet discussions in the storm’s aftermath, the students assured Miller they still wanted to travel to the festival and perform. However, it quickly became apparent that the performance needed to shift to tell the story of Helene’s impact on Watauga County and western North Carolina. 

The students crafted a play in which reporters are telling the story of before, during and after the storm, and the production follows three groups of people: a Christmas tree farmer, a group of siblings running a family coffee shop and three generations of women living near a local church.

I don’t know if I can quantify the pride.

In the immediate aftermath of the hurricane, with recovery efforts only beginning, the students turned to their craft to tell the story of this traumatic experience for themselves and their community. 

“I don’t know if I can quantify the pride,” Miller said. “I’m a 29-year theater educator in North Carolina, and I’ve never had an experience like this, where the connection to the material was so deep and so fast from the kids, where they were just willing to embrace this philosophy that Zach says all the time, go before you’re ready. They stepped into that with an incredible amount of courage.”

Miller explained that the storm had a direct impact on many students in the class, one of whom lost everything, and several of whom had to evacuate their homes. 

“When we started, we were still dealing with it,” Walker said. “So there was really no processing time. There was no place in our brains to put it. So when we started working on the show, it almost was a distraction in some ways. We were able to come into the theater and leave everything outside, knowing it would be there when we left. We could make the storm the way we wanted it to be, artistically. It wasn’t a month after the storm, then we started to build upon it.” 

A Wider Audience

Walker’s wife works at Wilkesboro Elementary School with Becky Spears, the 2024 North Carolina principal of the year, and Miller wrote an article for EdNC about teachers returning to work after Helene. 

Through these connections, Spears and EdNC CEO Mebane Rash came to Watauga High School to see the play.

“They said everybody should see this,” Miller said. “Everyone who’s experienced Helene needs to see this. It’s cathartic, it’s beautiful, it’s meaningful, it’s aged beyond their years.”

The day after seeing the play, Spears and Rash spoke with Rupen R. Fofaria, the director of board operations and policy for the state board of education. 

Stories don’t just entertain us. They help us understand ourselves and each other.

After the Pioneer Playmakers class captured both regional and state championships for SURGE, Fofaria and Rash moved quickly to try and allow the play to be performed for the state board of education. 

As fate would have it, NC State Vice Provost for Strategic Initiatives and Chief of Staff for Enrollment Management and Services Cindy Barr is a long-time Playmaker parent, and her daughter, Abby, is a senior in the class, leading Barr to connect Fofaria’s search to Arts NC State. 

“Stories don’t just entertain us,” Fofaria said when introducing the program. “They help us understand ourselves and each other. This is a group of students who confronted personal challenge and emotional upheaval to create an award-winning, original musical that fosters understanding, identification and emotional connection. I want to thank Arts NC State for hosting us here and making this performance possible.”

A Unique Opportunity

Miller said that it was “hard to find the words” for the gratitude the teachers and students felt towards NC State for the opportunity. 

Kennedy-McIlwee is a smaller space than the class normally performs in, but Arts NC State and University Theatre’s students and staff were on hand to focus lights, and teach the high school students how to use sound systems and other technology. 

It really gave us an opportunity that none of our students have had before.

“They were so welcoming,” Walker said. “They just accommodated us in every manner.”

Once it was clear the high school students knew what they were doing, Miller said that the University Theatre staff and students empowered them to run the theater production as they saw fit. 

“They empowered our kids,” she said. “I think the gratitude we have for NC State and this crew of people in their performing arts department and their theater, the gratitude I have for how they treated us, how they treated the kids, I could live a thousand years and talk a thousand hours and never express it enough. It really gave us an opportunity that none of our students have had before.”

That opportunity included performing the play in front of NC State staff and students, the aforementioned local dignitaries, as well as Kimberly Jones and Heather Smith, the past two North Carolina Teachers of the Year, and tell the firsthand story of Helene’s impact on the region. 

“The audience and our kids are like an arch, and Arts NC State was that keystone to connect that arch, and to allow us to share our story,” Walker said. “It’s almost no longer a play. It’s a service to the community. It’s a message. We wanted to make the ripples of this story go further, and all of these opportunities just made that impact go further.”

After the play was over, a talkback session allowed audience members to share their reactions to the play, as well as ask questions of the student performers about their experiences and artistic visions. 

“I think it’s only now that we’re months away from it that the kids are starting to look at adult reactions to this. They’re listening to the state teacher of the year talk to them last Wednesday and she’s sobbing as she’s expressing to them everything she’s taking away from their performance. It was only then that they realized this has such giant meaning for folks well beyond their ensemble.” 

In addition to the elected officials and board of education staff, the NC State community members in the audience also felt the impact of the story as they watched SURGE and engaged with the community members afterwards. 

“I was so moved by the beautiful and tragic work these brave high school students and educators created,” Reaves said. “But I was also moved by the responses from our NC State students in the audience during the talkback. We don’t just learn from the generations that come before us, but also the generations that follow us. Hearing our own students provide intentional, educated and heartfelt feedback to these talented high schoolers was a powerful moment for me.”

Miller called the opportunity to meet the state superintendent, lieutenant governor and board of education members a unique experience in her 29-year teaching career, and called the opportunity for those people to see the students’ work and engage with them about it “the gift of a lifetime.”

“Rare is the college who looks to the theater high schools as a place that they want to grab performances and share at their venue,” Miller said. “I think that there are sometimes high schools across the country that fight that implied snobbery between high school and college performances. NC State didn’t bat an eye. They were welcoming to us, they encouraged us. They valued what we brought before we knew what we were bringing, and then they were super supportive.”