Searching for Agency

A Young Woman, Whose Connection to Art and Politics Was Weaned in her High School Speech and Debate Program, Returns to the High School Where She Once Competed

By Katy Kragel

This article is part of the Stage Raw/Unusual Suspects Youth Journalism Program

During the holiday weekend dedicated to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., I sat in classrooms and cafeterias at James Logan High School in the Bay Area. Interestingly, six years ago, I was in those very classrooms as a high school student. While I didn’t attend James Logan, my high school speech and debate team took the road trip from Sacramento to Union City to attend their annual MLK Speech and Debate competition back in 2020; this past weekend, I took the road trip from Pasadena with the speech and debate team that I currently have the honor of coaching. Walking in the very halls where I once competed brought back a flood of memories and experiences that I’d thought I left behind forever. However, I was reminded of my speech roots, and perhaps more importantly, I was reminded that those experiences taught me more about my individual artistry than almost any acting class or production I’ve ever been part of.

I realize that seems like a crazy statement, especially for anyone who doesn’t have experience in the speech and debate world. When most people hear that I did high school speech and debate, they picture two students going head-to-head in a political discussion. In reality, the umbrella term of speech and debate covers around 20 different types of events. (My coach often compared it to track and field: many events all taking place in the same space but nevertheless quite different skill sets.) Certainly, the standard political debates exist, but my specialty was an area of events called interpretation events. I did two events called Dramatic Interpretation (DI) and Program Oral Interpretation (POI.) DI is a 10-minute monologue crafted from the script of a published play, movie, or autobiography, while POI is a 10-minute piece constructed from bits of all of those types of media and centered around one main theme. For example, my junior year of high school, my DI was a condensed version of the Oscar-nominated movie Jackie, and my POI used scripts from the Netflix TV show Mr. Iglesias, along with poetry, and news articles to criticize inequality in the United States education system. (If you’re still confused about the concept of interpretation events, just think of it as competitive acting!)

As self-explanatory as it may seem, the idea of using the arts as a form of social commentary felt completely new to me when I was in high school. I came from a children’s musical theater background, and quite frankly, I was far more concerned with pointing my toes and mining songs for comedic beats than I ever was about the message of the shows that we were doing. I just never really thought about it. Then, I remember attending one of my first big speech and debate competitions, and I realized how powerful storytelling really was.

Nearly brought to tears by one competitor’s 10-minute version of Duncan Macmillan and Johnny Donahoe’s play Every Brilliant Thing, which explores topics of grief and suicide, I realized the impact that storytelling could have. I watched a senior in high school perform a piece where he extensively described the horrors of having a suicidal mother while still choosing to see the bright, beautiful aspects of the world. He might’ve only been 17 or 18, but the maturity and care that he brought to that story still sticks with me just as much as any professional acting performance. Here I was, a musical theater performer of 10 years, but that 10-minute speech is what truly unlocked the power of performance for me. From there on out, I knew that I didn’t just want to pursue acting for the spectacle of it all but also to make stories that could really challenge and better our world.

Ultimately, I think that’s why speech and debate are combined into one competitive family. The debate world explores the politics of today, while the speech world understands that art shapes our culture and narratives that will always inherently impact those politics.

On a personal level, the speech world shaped so much of my critical eye and artistic lens as I continue to pursue acting as an adult. Interestingly, my story is not unique. Many successful artists had the platform of high school speech far before their rise to fame. Chadwick Boseman, Josh Gad, and Oprah Winfrey – just to name a few – all competed at national tournaments in speech events. But obviously, thousands of high schoolers compete all over the United States, and they aren’t planning on pursuing a career in the arts. Turns out, speech and debate is just as influential for them.

This past weekend, the President of the National Speech and Debate Association shared a shocking statistic about James Logan High School. He said that in 1989 when the speech and debate program began, the rate at which students from James Logan went to college was about 14%. However, over the next couple of years, the rate at which students specifically in the speech and debate program went to college was nearly 99%. This statistic shocked me. It certainly showed the power and positive influence that speech and debate can have on the lives of individual students, but it also made me think about the ongoing debates surrounding the arts in schools. While speech and debate is not technically an arts program, oftentimes, public schools toss it into the “unnecessary to fund” category.

At my public high school, we paid for coaching and tournaments almost entirely out-of-pocket, and even though our team was honored with national award recognition, the school district refused to allocate any funding toward the program. This meant that our coach had to leave, and now, the program is basically non-existent six years later.

As if that wasn’t heartbreaking enough to me, there was also never a theater or performance program at my high school in the first place. With the continual budget cuts and attack on the arts in schools, I am heartbroken to know that the very programs that shaped my entire outlook for my career path are no longer there. Even though arts programs are linked to better GPAs, higher graduation rates, and similar success in college, it feels like they are doomed, especially in public schools.

While this doom spiral and concern for the arts in schools weighs on my mind, the inspiration that I got this past weekend served as a reminder of why I am pursuing the career path that I am. Now as an adult watching these teenagers send powerful messages of advocacy through their artistry, I am reminded that if we continue to make art that is always in conversation with society and politics, it will always be in danger. And that’s even more of a reason to do it, especially in Trump’s America.

Finding ways to continue to support our students in their acts of artistic rebellion regardless of funding will always be one of my personal missions, and I know that I’m not alone in that. The debate about whether or not we should fund artistic programs in schools has not gone away since I was 15, but neither has the ambition and power of students continually finding ways to engage in these activities. And with that passion, we are truly working toward the quote that is always spoken at the final awards ceremony for the James Logan speech and debate tournament from Dr. King himself: “I have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their minds, and dignity, equality and freedom for their spirits.”