Simeon returns to the stage as students shine

Simeon students – At Simeon Career Academy, basketball-focused students are finding their way onto the stage. With a $10,000 grant, a new upper-level drama class, and help from a professional director, the school has staged “The Piano Lesson,” turning nerves and inexperience in

When Deonte Haywood arrived at Simeon Career Academy in the fall, he felt “shy about his height.” Among so many towering students chasing dreams of becoming the next Derrick Rose, he worried he wouldn’t find his place.

A school counselor’s choice changed that. The counselor enrolled him in a drama class—and that class was soon tasked with producing Simeon’s first full-length play in perhaps decades.

For the show, Haywood didn’t shrink into the background. He filled the stage as a Southern preacher in a fitted blue suit. He said it wasn’t just another shot at being seen. The role came in a play by August Wilson, and he called the experience a real chance to open up.

“It really gave me a chance to express myself,” he said. “I became friends with everybody and our bond grew stronger.”

At a lot of high schools, the annual play is a staple. For some students, it fuels dreams of becoming professional performers. For others, like Haywood, it becomes a safer place to learn how to work together and belong to something bigger than themselves.

Most Chicago public high schools offer arts performances families can attend. But last year. only 37 of the district’s 115 high schools reported offering a theatrical production. according to an annual survey by Ingenuity Chicago. an organization that advocates for equity in arts education across Chicago Public Schools.

Principal Tamarah Ellis said she cannot remember a play at Simeon for as long as she’s been there. That includes her time as a student in the 1980s and later as a teacher in the early 2000s.

When she took over last year, the idea came through the drama teacher. Ellis said she wanted to make it happen quickly, not as a side project, but as something students could celebrate.

“I was adamant,” she said. “We need to give the kids something to celebrate. We have a lot of students that watch movies and they dream of having that opportunity. So, what better place to start rather than high school?”

Ellis said she doesn’t know why Simeon went without a play for so many years. The school is known as a career and technical academy, with sports—especially basketball—sitting at the center of its identity. She said it’s likely past principals spent limited discretionary funds on those programs.

Drama teacher David Hossler pointed to last year as the moment the project became real. He had been teaching at Simeon for three years at the time, and he said it was his first teaching job. He told the story of how his own confidence grew when two things lined up.

First, he heard the Educational Theatre Foundation—an organization that works to expand access to theater in schools—was offering $10,000 grants. Second, he got Ellis’ support for an upper-level drama class capable of putting on a play.

Simeon won the grant. The money helped hire a director and buy materials so the school’s carpentry program could build the set. Adults were also paid to help with the music and production design.

Hossler chose August Wilson’s “The Piano Lesson” for students to perform. He said Wilson is the “most important playwright ever born on American soil.” He also believed students could connect with the story itself. which includes a ghost and asks whether people should hold onto the past or let it go.

To direct the production, the school selected Justice Ford, an award-winning young actress. Ford said she got her start acting in a CPS elementary school rendition of “Fiddler on the Roof.” She framed the Simeon job as a way to give back.

“I am here trying to plant seeds, showing our Black babies that there are options,” she said. “Expression is our birthright, so that’s what I am doing here.”

The work, Ford and the staff quickly learned, would require more than talent. Even though the students were enrolled in an upper-level drama class, most had never been in a play before. And because Simeon had not done plays, many hadn’t even seen one.

Semaj Jackson, a senior, said the process was difficult in a way that surprised her. She practiced daily for most of the school year and worked at home too, going over her lines and recruiting her mom’s help. Even on dress rehearsal day, she described stumbles and stops.

“It’s been a pretty serious, hard process, because I never did a play before,” she said. “But we’re getting through it.”

Jackson said the actors sometimes made mistakes during rehearsals and would start laughing for “like 10 minutes.” Then, on the day of the play, they pulled it together—at least to the audience’s eye—getting through scene by scene.

Her mother, Yentl Brumfield, said she was impressed that her daughter had the lead role. Brumfield spent three hours walking in heels, something she said she had never seen her daughter do before.

“I really think this is opening her up as a young woman,” Brumfield said. “She doesn’t really talk too much … she stays to herself.”

Rio Barfield said she was happy to see her quiet son, Joshua, get out of his comfort zone in the play. As parents watched, they also fell into their own memories—Mothers and families reminiscing about the productions they saw when they were in high school.

For Barfield, that meant “A Raisin in the Sun,” Lorraine Hansberry’s acclaimed story about a Black family from Chicago’s South Side, which she saw at Corliss High School.

“Sadly, the arts are being taken out of a lot of schools,” she said. “But the arts are definitely important for the kids to find that creativity, give them a chance to express themselves and just overall brighten their horizons.”

Simeon Career Academy The Piano Lesson August Wilson Chicago public schools arts education Educational Theatre Foundation drama class Justice Ford Deonte Haywood Semaj Jackson