The following account is true. The events rolled out like a bad dream, in spite of my best intentions.
In the summer of 1995, I received a grant from the Iowa Arts Council to create a history play for elementary schools as part of Iowa’s 150th statehood celebration. I had never written or directed a play before, but felt inspired to create a play for kids where they would experience performing, learn their state’s history, and be appreciated. I envisioned preparing the whole school to perform the play for parents at the end of a one-week residency.
The play would begin half a million years ago and progress through to the Civil War, following Iowa’s statehood in 1846. Each scene would have specific costumes and props, recorded music, and lots of action, which I would narrate.
At the time, I was just beginning to teach residencies in schools and had little idea of the time and energy it takes to work with kids, especially the young ones. Propelled by clueless enthusiasm, I plowed ahead, employing three seamstresses to create 200 costumes and yards of curtains, and a carpenter to build props. I then booked several schools through the Iowa Arts Council. I was ready.
My maiden residency was in a public elementary school of 250 students in northwest Iowa. I was hosted by an older couple who, upon my arrival, greeted me warmly and then, during dinner, asked if I was right with the Lord. Surprised at the question I chewed a little longer, noticing their pictures of Jesus, and considered how to phrase my reply. I finally swallowed and said that I am right with the Lord, but we prefer to keep the details of our relationship private for now, hoping this would satisfy, while thinking that this week should be interesting.
My plan was to allow one hour to teach a scene, review it, and then distribute the costumes. I knew this plan was in trouble when my opening class of first graders took ten minutes to enter the gym and sit down. Soon, it was a shock to realize that they had zero understanding of spacial relationships and the attention spans of, well, first graders. As soon as they were put into position, they moved, wiggling around like displaced earthworms.
“Iowa’s Prehistoric Fish” was the scene I had planned for this class. It was a combination of fact and fantasy designed to show how ancient Iowa was covered by seawater half a million years ago. While I narrated, the children would move across the stage in schools of fish: huge whalefish, meowing catfish, performing rockstar fish, dancing Michael Jackson fish, and so on.
As soon as I prepared one group of children and moved on, the first group would wander off. Then somebody would need to go to the bathroom, which sparked a mass exodus. When they returned, it was as if the previous work had been etch-a-sketched out of existence. They all ended up bunched together in an amorphous cluster of arms and legs, giggling at me and peeking through the curtains. I felt the first tingle of fear arise in my back.
Mercifully, the class ended. Their teacher gave me a compassionate smile as she herded them out of the gym. Several of the children, sensing my emotional state, gave me hugs. It was only 9:00 a.m. and I needed a long nap, a therapist, and a career counselor. Four more classes to go today, 100 more students, and it was only Monday.
The older grades handled the scenes better. These scenes covered subjects like Native American village life, pioneer living, Civil War battle with gunsmoke from a fog machine, and early schoolhouse with corporal punishment.
Costume distribution became yet another learning experience. My carefully arranged piles of hats, vests, skirts, aprons, shawls, and mustaches flew threw the air as the children charged forward and fought for their favorite items. An hour’s work of assembling, collating, and arranging turned into an indiscriminate pile of wool and cotton blends. I expected that I’d have to make a few adjustments, but at this moment, I just wanted to beam myself to a planet far far away.
My hosts inquired how my day had gone, and wondered, no doubt, how I had aged ten years. I gave them a succinct overview and the grace before dinner was an extended prayer for my success.
I awoke Tuesday rejuvenated with fresh ideas on how to approach the first graders. Knowing they exhibited zero predictability or memory function, I would move them to the “Trees of Iowa” scene. There, clusters of children, each representing a tree, would stand unmoving in one place marked by a large red X. They would then move their arms to illustrate the weather conditions found in early Iowa. They would twitter their hands for rain, sway for wind, bend under the weight of snow, and shake frenetically to illustrate a forest fire. I would narrate all this while their teachers mimed the correct movements. Done.
As the week progressed, I was now handing out the costumes personally, one at a time, take it or leave it. On Wednesday, I lost most of the morning because that time was reserved for religion and worship, surprising in a public school.
By Thursday, I was becoming concerned about the time the play would take to present. I felt another tweak of fear as I realized that the hour I’d scheduled for the performance could easily swell to two hours or more. Easily.
On Friday morning, the day of the performance, I thanked my hosts for all the great meals, and for their prayers on my behalf. I was touched that they gave me a leather Bible as a parting gift. They must have felt I needed all the help I could get, and not just with the play.
The principal agreed to move the start of the play back and notified parents. He cautioned that the children needed time to return to their classes before boarding buses. I also needed time for the resorting, folding, and return of costumes. “Many hands make short work” was my motto. The play was coming together!
On Friday morning, the day of the performance, Civil War music played as 250 excited kids entered the gym for the Great Iowa History Play. They were all arrayed in costumes and sat with their teachers on the floor. Parents packed the bleachers, waved to their children, and swarmed down for photos.
A feeling of anticipation was in the air as the play began and scenes unfolded. I could see a range of expressions from delight to puzzlement on the faces of the adult audience.
In “Trees of Iowa,” the first graders rose to the occasion and energetically mimed Iowa’s trees moving to wind, rain, snow, and fire. When the children, as trees, frantically shook from the flames and gradually sank to the ground, I flashed on how this conflagration of “burning” children must have looked to their mothers, and felt yet another tickle of fear.
“The Frontier Scene” got off to a rocky start when the wagon carrying the “frontier family” lost a wheel and tipped over. I explained that these setbacks were commonplace out on the prairie. The square dance was loud and lively as dancers swung their partners and sidestepped together in pairs down the gauntlet—followed by cartwheels, splits, backflips, and breakdances, all to enthusiastic applause and without major injury.
When it came to the final scene about events leading to the Civil War, the principal caught my eye and pointed to his watch, so I knew that time was short. The battle began with a recording of gunfire signaling the opposing lines of boys to charge.
Perhaps it was the excitement of being on stage, or of acting in front of hundreds of people, or the settling of old grudges, but for whatever reason, instead of just a charge followed by a brief non-contact fight, these boys crashed into each other, swinging away, knocking over curtains, and screaming out their battle cry. Their teacher, who was being continually “stabbed” by several boys, finally fell. He was so large that the girls, as nurses, gave up trying drag him off, and helped him to a table that collapsed when he flopped down onto it.
Suddenly, I realized I could barely see! The fog machine was still pumping out clouds of smoke into the gym. The kids in the audience were shrieking and screaming and coughing. Parents started to panic, thinking there was a fire . . . and then the bell rang out for the buses.
Parents were now flooding down from the bleachers trying to find their kids, who were discarding costumes as they ran. Some boys were crying as they struggled to remove the glued mustaches while being herded toward the exits by their mothers. The principal heroically tried to restore order. He kept yelling that the buses would wait. I was shouting into the mic that “the smoke was just stage fog, non-toxic, perfectly safe and—Everybody! Everybody!—don’t forget to fold and return your costumes.”
I finally found the fog machine under a curtain and turned it off.
I’ve experienced few moments more lonely than on that Friday afternoon, in that empty gym, littered with the detritus of a play gone bad. As far as the eye could see, thrown as if by a tornado, were hats, shirts, aprons, vests, skirts, and fish costumes. Mustaches like little black caterpillars were stuck everywhere. I just stood there for quite awhile and took it all in: the costumes, the deserted bleachers, the curtains splayed out on the floor, and all the fog smoke floating innocuously near the ceiling. A janitor came in, looked at the disheveled gym, glanced at me, and left. I mechanically started throwing the costumes into bags.
Within a week, the school forwarded two boxes of costumes that were discovered, as well as several letters from upset parents. They complained about the duration of the play, the sticky mustaches, the “burning” children, the breakdancing, the violence, and the play’s inconsistency with the Biblical age of the earth.
I had written the teachers and thanked them for all their help and support. They reported back that the play was “memorable,” and that it was “all the kids could talk about.”
I have now been presenting my Great State History Play for over 30 years—more than 500 productions involving tens of thousands of children in schools throughout Iowa, Nebraska, and Illinois. Of course, it’s not the same play. I chose the four most dynamic scenes and cut the other eight. The residency was shortened from five days to one, and I use only the grade studying their state’s history. I sold the fog machine.
These days, it’s not uncommon for parents to come up to me after their child’s performance and describe the role that they had in my play—20 years earlier. I look back with gratitude and humility at the history that the history play itself has created, and recall, with a shiver, the fiasco that started it all.