Last week my amazing daughter, Anna Portnoy, put on MacBeth with her amazing eleventh grade students. Together they managed to put on a spectacular rendition in modern dress with hints of Boston streets seeping into MacBeth’s Scotland. Shakespeare in Wonderland. The kids loved the play because they saw how MacBeth was corrupted by power and by the violence he perpetrated, how it drove him mad. Many of them have witnessed violence on the Boston streets.

Today an article was published in The Bay State Banner with a full report on the play. You might like to check it out. Marques Latimore gave an outstanding performance as MacBeth. It’s such a large and daunting role and without a student willing to take on the hard work of preparing fr it the play could not have happened. So many other students also pitched in and participated. Lady MacBeth, the witches, Duncan—they were all fantastic. And it took a teacher like Anna, who believes in her students and who put in hours and hours of extra work. Back in my day the arts in school were dismissed as frivolous. It seems like times haven’t changed much. Apart from a few teachers who use the arts to teach curriculum and develop individual expression not much happens.

Teachers are not paid to do this work. There is almost no support for the arts in the Boston public schools. That’s a crime considering the payoff. In putting on this play these kids have learned things that you just can’t learn from books. They’ve overcome fears about performance—most had never been in a play before. They tackled the difficult language of Shakespeare and considered how to present scenes. They constructed sets and made costumes. They made a sound track with music they know and love. Think MacBeth and Michael Jackson’s Thriller. They choreographed a dance that brought the house down. They had disagreements, I’m sure. But when the curtain came down for the last time it came down on on a group of kids who know themselves a little better and who know know what it is to achieve something fantastic.

The fact that a group of kids worked together for three months on this play, staying after school and juggling jobs as well as their homework is testament to the power of artistic expression. Thank you, Shakespeare. It was so moving to see how the kids worked together and to witness theirs and Anna’s creativity.

It sounds hackneyed but I’ll say it anyway—the arts are transforming. They change lives. That’s their purpose. So when are we going to put money towards arts education? If we want kids to graduate with a solid sense of themselves and the spirit they possess then here’s the recipe—fund arts in the schools (hey, fund education, fund good teachers) and we’ll live in a world we all want to live in.