The central figure of the book is Lou Volpe, a high school drama director who consistently produces nationally recognized high school productions and is entrusted by Broadway legends to develop productions suited for high schools while doing justice to the original piece.The backdrop for Volpe's magic and passion is Harry S Truman High School, located in a town where people worked steady factory jobs, but are now constantly being laid off and struggling to find consistent employment.
Volpe achieves greater success than other high schools with students who possess acting coaches and take voice lessons.
Truman students do not do these things. Truman students come from broken homes, crowded living spaces and often have jobs themselves to help support their families.
The contrast is evident when one Truman student interviews for a scholarship opportunity, and is asked about community service.
He describes how he helps kids in his neighborhood with trick-or-treating, but can tell this is not the answer the scholarship panel is looking for.
He then answers honestly - that he attends school, goes to theater rehearsals and then works a job at a fast food restaurant. Community service is not a concept that he, or most Truman kids, are familiar with.
At Truman, Volpe has built a theater program much like "Glee," where it's acceptable for jocks and popular kids to do theater. Part of this is because under Volpe's guidance, his kids are exposed to so much more than a play or what Levittown can offer.
His kids are taught to think beyond the words written on a page, to reach within themselves to become the character and are challenged each day during rehearsals.
The majority of the book centers around the production of Good Boys and True, a modern play about a popular, privileged boy who films a sexual encounter with a girl he meets at the bar.
The boy's perfect and privileged life falls part as his mother is humiliated by his actions and the hurt caused to the girl in the tape.
His relationship with his best friend, who is gay and with whom he has had sexual contact with, adds complexity to motivations of accidentally leaving the sex tape to be discovered.
A group of six, the cast of Good Boys and True do a tremendous job. Not only are they invited to perform at the Main Stage at the International Thespian Festival in Nebraska, but also receive a standing ovation. One of the actresses is mistakenly for a professional actress.
They form a bond that can only be formed when you're young and your life is consumed by the moment. As part of practices before national high school theater festivals, the cast sits back to back in a row of three to recite their lines of the play. If anyone makes a mistake, the group begins again, starting from the first line of the play.
Although interesting, Drama High is all over the place, even more so than the sub-title indicates. In addition to Volpe and Truman High School, Sokolove talks about the town, including his own experience growing up in Levittown. National politics - No Child Left Behind - gets a chapter, as does Tracey Krause, Volpe's assistant director.
Krause is a bad ass and someone worth writing about, but it's another tangent that distracts from the most compelling part of the story, which has to do with the production and kids of Good Boys and True.
The book would have been a lot sharper and focused if the book centered around the cast and how the kids ended up after graduating from Truman, given what Volpe has provided them.
The human interest, underdog story. Instead, Sokolove takes tangents on different topics, and even starts writing about another production Volpe puts on before his retirement in 2013.
At least with social media today, there's a way to find out how the cast is doing given how Volpe opened up the world to them.
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