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Theater Kids Save the World

What is it about drama class that gives students the confidence, compassion and creativity to lead a revolution?

Theater Kids Save the World
<strong>ROCK AND REVOLUTION:</strong> Lizzie Saunders (center) plays Sheila Franklin in the Santa Barbara <em>High</em> production of Hair.

Everyone who’s been to high school knows it: Jocks top the student hierarchy. They earn the yearbook’s Most Popular designations and dictate, by their mere arrival, where the coolest after-prom parties are.

But when a group of outspoken, articulate, enraged students galvanized the nation after last month’s massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, it wasn’t a pack of athletes. It was a ragtag troupe of theater kids.

That’s right: drama nerds. Who typically hover hierarchically down around stoner, delinquent, brainiac, and band geek.