Donors Choose: Students attend IRT Production

Due to lack of personal finances, few of Nancy Ewing’s 75 high school English students have attended a stage production. Ms. Ewing turned to Donors Choose to find the funding her students needed to experience “The Heavens Are Hung in Black.”

The play at Indiana Repertory Theatre was not only an educational experience that piggybacked on English and other curricular area standards, but it also provided a valuable cultural experience for the students.

The play was about President Abraham Lincoln in the year 1862 when he is mourning the death of his son while struggling to find a just solution to the slavery problem.

This play addressed Indiana Standards in four areas: literature/language arts; social studies; character development/diversity; and theatre. It also benefitted the students by allowing them to see a genre of literature with which they are not familiar; by familiarizing them with events and famous Americans from the Civil War; and by allowing them to hear and question the actors and crew after the show. Students wrote a play review after returning to school.