Community Commentary:

If you aren’t a drama student at John Burroughs High School, then you probably don’t know that Scott Bailey, my revered former teacher and director, has recently been reassigned to the English department, where the school administration probably believes he will stir up less trouble.

Except that I find fault with this decision, because in this case “trouble” involves introducing his students to Pulitzer Prize-winning plays, Shakespeare and tolerance, among other things.

At a recent school board meeting, some of my fellow drama students as well as their parents spoke about the importance of keeping Bailey teaching drama. I would have been there myself, if I weren’t away at a university where I happen to be studying the very pieces of Western literature Bailey introduced me to in his drama class. Had I been able to speak at that school board meeting, this is what I would have said:

Enrolling in Bailey’s drama class my sophomore year was the single best decision I made in my four years at John Burroughs High School.

I loved it so much that I made room in my schedules over the next two years so that I could continue to be taught by Bailey.

In my three years under his instruction, we read plays by Shakespeare, Molière, Aeschalus and Sophocles among others. These are playwrights who continue to influence the way I think about theater and literature even now. In fact, appreciating “Antigone” in my college humanities class would have been much more difficult had Bailey not given us a taste of Ancient Greek theater previously.

In addition to reading and analyzing these important cultural artworks, Bailey also taught his students to appreciate live theater, though many of them had never set foot near a stage before. In a culture that is becoming increasingly dependent on being entertained solely by TV and video games, I find his students’ newfound appreciation of musicals, plays and dance pieces admirable.

It is my opinion that John Burroughs Principal Emilio Urioste’s decision to remove Bailey from drama classes was due in part to Bailey’s desire to produce Moisés Kaufman’s “The Laramie Project” as the annual spring play.

The dialogue of “The Laramie Project” is made up of real interviews given by citizens of a town in Wyoming directly after a college student at the University of Wyoming named Matthew Shepard was brutally beaten and left to die in 1998.