Morehead State University’s The Little Company Presents This is My Heart for You by Silas House Study Guide Authors Dramaturgy Research Andrea Cox, Rebecca Earehart, Caleb Lunsford, Dylan Stacy, Cassidy Stearman Format and Design Rebecca Earehart- Graphic Designer Curriculum Research and Lesson Plan Alyssa Francis, Dylan Stacy The Little Company Staff Octavia Biggs - The Little Company Director Corinne Campagna - The Little Company Tour Coordinator The Little Company Morehead State University 106 Baird Music Hall Morehead KY 40351 606-783-2545 www.moreheadstate.edu/thelittlecompany www.facebook.com/The-Little-Company 2 Table of Contents This is My Heart for You........................................................4 About the Author...................................................................5 Note from the Playwright......................................................7 Director’s Note.....................................................................12 Designer Notes.....................................................................15 History of Kudzu..................................................................18 Religion in Kentucky............................................................19 Kentucky Authors.................................................................20 Social Media and Bullying....................................................21 Appalachia............................................................................22 L.G.B.T. History....................................................................23 Religion and L.G.B.T.............................................................24 Science Lesson Plan.............................................................26 English Lesson Plan.............................................................34 Drama Lesson Plan..............................................................41 Visual Arts Lesson Plan.......................................................58 Math Lesson Plan.................................................................53 Gardening Lesson Plan.........................................................61 Dance Lesson Plan...............................................................66 Music Lesson Plan................................................................69 Bibliography.........................................................................74 Glossary................................................................................75 Student Resources................................................................81 3 This is My Heart for You This is My Heart for You is a story about love, acceptance and finding your own place in the world. Set against the kudzu covered backdrop of Appalachia the characters and their stories are familiar ones. This particular story is about one summer that will change the town of Troublesome, KY forever. After two boys are kicked out of the local swimming pool for “perceived gay behavior,” a media circus ensues and the town is ripped in two, as everyone picks a side. Jesse finds himself in the middle of the commotion, can he discover his true self, while finding where he truly belongs? “Acceptance and love are the same thing, you can’t have one without the other.” -Silas House This is My Heart For You 4 About the Author Silas House Silas Dwane House was born on August 7th, 1971, in Laurel County Kentucky. Silas House is married to writer and editor Jason Howard, whom he now has two children. House’s fiction is known for its attention to the natural world, working class characters, and the plight of the rural place and rural people. With a job as a mail carrier, House quickly moved on to writing novels in the genre of Southern literature. House is now a novelist, journalist, environmental activist, and columnist. House attended Spalding University in Louisville Kentucky, for a Masters of Fine Arts. In 2000 he was chosen as one of the ten emerging talents in the south by the Millennial Gathering. House then published his first novel,Clay’s Quilt, in 2001, after which he appeared in the New York Times briefly on the Best Sellers list. House soon became a word of mouth success. Clay’s Quilt continued on, winning the award for Special Achievement from the Fellowship of Southern Writers, the Chaffin Award for Literature, and the Kentucky Novel of the Year Award. House’s sixth novel Southernmost was published in 2018 and was long-listed for the Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, and won the Judy Gaines Young Book Award in 2019. He is also a finalist for theWillie Morris Book Award and the winner of the 2019 Weatherford Award for Fiction. In 2009 he published his series Something’s Rising, addressing mountaintop removal, after becoming a visible face in the fight against it. Many of his novels and plays set in the Appalachian region mention mountain top removal, even if it is not the main theme. He was a speaker in 2011 at Appalachia Rising, a major protest that took place in Washington D.C. that resulted in more than 115 arrests. He isn’t just an activist for mountain top removal though, as he participated in the 2017 Women’s March in Lexington, Kentucky. House wrote an editorial for the New York Times about the fight for gay equality in small towns, 5 About Silas House Cont. which led to the invitation to speak at the Library of Congress in August, 2015. As a playwright, he wrote The Hurting Part, produced by the University of Kentucky. His second play, written in 2009, titled Long Time Traveling, was produced by the Actors Guild of Lexington, Kentucky. Finally, at Berea College, the Berea College Laboratory Theatre presented his controversial play This is My Heart for You, focusing on a small town divided by a gay rights discrimination case and hate crimes. Overall Silas House is an active writer, from novels to plays to columns in the New York Times. He is active in his local community, and fights for what he believes is right. He uses his medium to work towards addressing controversial subjects, and isn’t afraid to put his face to his cause. From activism, to journalism, his fight for what’s right never stops. 6 Note from the Playwright In the summer of 2011, just as I was sitting down to write a play about the complexities of coal mining in the region, Appalachia suddenly presented itself as a place teeming with inequality, and even hatred. In Harlan County, Kentucky, Kevin Pennington, 28, was almost beaten to death by two men and two women who screamed “Kill that faggot!” while beating him. He managed to escape while the four were huddled, planning how to dispose of his body. This went onto become the first federally prosecuted hate crime in the United States under a new hate crime bill introduced by President Obama in 2009. All four of the assailants were acquitted. In the same county two months later a couple was attacked by a mob of about fifty people who shot fireworks at them and beat them while calling them derogatory terms based on their orientation, in front of one of the women’s children, in a church parking lot. During the trial, the defendant’s attorney asked the couple if they quote “promoted a lesbian lifestyle” and asked why one of the women still had custody of her children quote “even though” she was a lesbian. A couple of days later, in Berea, Kentucky, a town known not only for its history of educating Appalachian youth but also for being the first integrated school in the South and having a history of involvement in the fight for equal rights, the vehicles of an interracial couple living in the town were vandalized with racial slurs. In response, the town unified with town meetings and a show of support for the couple. 7 Note from the Playwright Cont. The whole long summer saw the town of Berea discussing whether or not it should pass a Fairness Ordinance. Opponents to the ordinance—most of whom identified with particular religious groups— decried the move as a plea for special rights, even though religious groups have a special clause on the Kentucky law books that protect them from similar treatment. Some of those opposed to the ordinance held signs written on notebook paper that read “Against Fairness”. People are often shocked when I tell them that we have now been fighting for a fairness ordinance in Berea for more than two years even though Berea is thought of as a progressive place. Meanwhile, the people keep working for change. A church in Pike County, Kentucky voted to ban an interracial couple from singing in its pulpit. The church’s board of directors later solidified their decision by voting on a new bylaw that stated interracial couples would not be able to participate in any ceremonies there except funerals and would not be welcomed as new members of the congregation. This led to outcry from local community members and became a widely shared story on social media. And throughout the entire year a West Virginia lawsuit continued between Massey Energy and a gay coal miner named Sam Hall who was horribly harassed at his workplace with the full knowledge of his superiors. His coworkers accused him of being a child molester because of his orientation, shook their penises at him, spray-painted “Quit Fag” on his car, and removed the wheel weights from his tires. Supervisors laughed at the abuse. Perhaps most famously that summer, a man kicked two young men out of the Hazard, Kentucky swimming pool, for “acting gay.” This led to protests and international media attention. In this particular case the two men who were ejected were mentally