Harry S Truman High School in Levittown, Pa., was once known for good union jobs that are now decades gone, but the school is now home to one of the best theater programs in the country.
The man responsible for the success is Lou Volpe, and he's at the center of Micheal Sokolove’s recent book, “Drama High: The Incredible True Story of a Brilliant Teacher, a Struggling Town, and the Magic of Theater.”
Sokolove, now a writer for the New York Times Magazine, is a former student of Volpe, and said it's because of him that he's in the profession today. More interested in sports than education during high school, Sokolove said it was the simple act of Volpe telling him in the 11th grade that he thought he was a great writer that changed his life.
"What a great teacher tells you doesn't have to be that profound," he said. "It just has to be said at the right moment, and hit the right spot that no teacher or parent has ever touched before, and that was that moment for me."
In a community with many on the brink of poverty, Volpe and his students have produced cutting-edge plays that has earned the attention of Broadway. Back in 2007, Truman High School became the first school to stage a production of "Rent." Sokolove writes that the themes in "Rent" might seem mainstream now, but they weren't in small-town America back then. To this day, only about 150 other high schools out of 25,000 have performed the play, and Sokolove said he feels that if all high schools do is put on plays that are decades old, they miss a real learning opportunity.
"One of Lou's students said to me about the material they do, is that it's the reason to do theater," said Sokolove, "To work things out, that in real life, make people uncomfortable."
After teaching for over four decades, Volpe recently retired, but his impact on his students and the community won't soon be forgotten. Throughout the book are testaments from former students who described Volpe as "knowing me, better than I knew myself."
