​Photos by Carrie Billett, Daniel Robinson, & Robert Gipe.

Higher Ground’s eighth play, Perfect Buckets, was commissioned by the Southern Foodways Alliance and the Cockayne Fund to be performed at the SFA conference in Oxford, Mississippi on October 26th. Our charge from the SFA was to create a short play that dramatized the relationship between food and labor in the mountains. Perfect Bucketsgrew out of interviews collected the spring, summer, and fall of 2019 and included music by the Kudzu Killers, Ryland Pope, and the cast. The play focuses on social media, potlucks, labor activism, and their effects on community cohesion. The play also includes stories based on the miners blockade that took place in Harlan in Summer 2019. 

​The Blackjewel blockade was a national news story during the summer of 2019, and took place less than a mile from Higher Ground’s home theater. Blackjewel LLC, one of the largest coal producers in the nation, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in early July 2019, leaving hundreds of its Kentucky employees with cold checks. Following the bankruptcy, a group of former Blackjewel employees blocked a train that was attempting to haul coal from one of the company’s Harlan County mines. For almost two months, the miners and their families blocked the tracks, determined to stop any coal moving from the Blackjewel mines until they received what they were owed. In September, after more than two months camped out on the tracks, the former employees ended their protests. The Blackjewel families are now pursuing justice through the courts. On October 2nd, an attorney representing the coal company submitted a proposal to a West Virginia bankruptcy court that could provide Blackjewel LLC with about $5.5 million to pay its former Kentucky employees. Justice for the miners and their families has been slow in coming.

​Higher Ground had to rush to integrate the blockade into Perfect Buckets. We would have liked to have spent more time on the writing and worked more closely with the miners and their families than we did. However, former cast member Jennifer McDaniels helped Higher Ground take part in an online chat group with some of the families participating in the blockade, and we were able to organize a preview performance in Cumberland that included a talkback session with many of those involved in the blockade. The script also left a space open for updates as the story unfolded while we were performing the piece.

​Perfect Buckets takes its name from something Harlan restaurant owner Joyce Cheng said during her interview about the blockade. Cheng ran fifty miles raising money for the miners and their families, and did so, coincidentally, at almost the same time as a federal ICE raid shut down a Mississippi chicken processing plant and deported over 300 of its workers. When we asked Cheng, an immigrant from China who is much beloved in the community but has endured unkind treatment by a sorry few how she kept her heart in the right place said, “You have to see the good in people and not just the bad. Even perfect buckets have a crack.”

​We carried Cheng’s message and the story of the Blackjewel blockade to Mississippi and shared it with an audience of 300 chefs, food writers, and others involved in the business and culture of Southern food on October 26, 2019 in Oxford. On our return, Higher Ground partnered with the Wrigley Taproom to present the final show of the 2019 run of Higher Ground 8: Perfect Bucketsin Corbin, Kentucky as part of a fundraiser for the Appalachian Food Summit. The Corbin Cornbread Convocation, as the Corbin event is called, took place November 9, 2019 at the Wrigley Taproom and at the Second and Main event center, in downtown Corbin. The Appalachian Food Summit is a community of writers, scholars, restaurateurs, farmers, producers, chefs and others who honor the past, celebrate the present and support a sustainable future for Appalachia. The Cornbread Convocation explored the dynamic between food and community stories with a progressive dinner, starting at The Wrigley Taproom, then journeying down Corbin's Main Street to experience Perfect Buckets. As SFA had done in Oxford, chef Kristin M Smith created a menu inspired by scenes from the production. 

​By the time we performed Perfect Buckets in Corbin, we had secured the immediate future of Higher Ground, thanks to a new partnership with Brook and Pam Smith and the gift they made to Southeast Kentucky Community & Technical College in support of Higher Ground. The Smiths’ gift will support a new production in the Spring of 2021 and allowed us to hire new Higher Ground faculty. Those faculty start work in June 2020.

Photos by Oakley Fugate, Robert Gipe, and Mountain Tech Media.

As Higher Ground brought people together to depict our community’s capacity for transformation, we have been asked to be more actively engaged in that transformation. Over the years, Higher Ground staff has been involved in renovation of historic buildings, downtown and tourism development, arts education, hospitality and construction workforce development, and branding efforts. In 2017, we grouped that community development work under an umbrella called first the Southeast Kentucky Revitalization Project, and later the Mountain Training Network. Since 2017, SKCTC Appalachian Program staff managed over a million dollars in downtown development projects and kept Higher Ground going essentially as volunteers.
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In 2017, USAP, a coalition of community groups working in Letcher County to reduce the harm caused by needle drug use, contracted with Higher Ground to create a portable, original drama to raise discussion of needle exchanges. Needle Work is the play Higher Ground created for USAP. Needle Workexamines needle exchanges, where substance abusers can exchange dirty syringes for clean ones without fear of legal consequences, as a way of stemming the spread of diseases such as hepatitis and HIV/AIDs and helping addicts get into recovery. The play centers on a mountain woman—Sweet Betty, a character in Find A Way and Life Is Like A Vapor—who has lost a daughter to drug abuse, and starts a needle exchange out of her home. Her friends are shocked; dramatic behavior ensues. There are comic moments along the way, and songs are sung, and stories light and heavy are told that reflect the humor and beauty in our collective struggle to find our way through difficult circumstances.

​Higher Ground’s plan was to perform the play twice, once in Whitesburg and once in Cumberland. After these two performances, our plan was to focus on the community development work that was part of the Southeast Kentucky Revitalization Project. The development work was preceded by an extensive and well-received community strategic planning process in Harlan County, and expanded to include partners and projects throughout Eastern Kentucky.  What we did not plan on is that the coalition that sponsored Needle Workcreated opportunities for Higher Ground to perform Needle Workat schools, health care centers, and community gatherings throughout Eastern Kentucky. Nor did we anticipate public health agencies in Southwest Virginia contracting with us to perform the play in Wise and Dickenson counties.
In the twenty years since the introduction of OxyContin, the most notorious and dangerous of the synthetic opioids, we have learned a great deal about how to treat addiction, and as importantly, addicts. We have learned new levels of compassion and patience. We have diversified the range of treatment facilities and programs addressing the crisis, and developed skilled and experienced leadership who understand what it takes to help addicts reclaim healthier, happier lives. That leadership asked Higher Ground to participate in their work, to perform Needle Work as part of engaging our communities in new ways of thinking about recovery.

Never in the history of Higher Ground had we felt the sense of responsibility coming from the field that is actively engaged with an issue raised in one of our plays. And so we continued to take on contracts to perform Needle Work in communities throughout the region. When the production closed, I made the following post on social media:
 
On Wednesday April 3, 2019, Higher Ground gave two performances of Needle Work in Nelsonville, Ohio in the Stuart Opera House. These were the last two scheduled performances. The play, which was created from interviews conducted in Letcher and Harlan counties, included original music from Harlan’s Kudzu Killers and discussed the essential humanity of addicts and whether they are worthy of the concern and sympathy of our communities and how that concern and sympathy might best be expressed. Higher Ground performed Needle Work in Whitesburg, Cumberland, Louisa, Pikeville, Berea, and Pine Mountain Settlement School in Kentucky, and Wise and Clintwood in Virginia, in addition to the two shows in Nelsonville.
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There are many people and organizations who deserve our gratitude for their support of the production of Needle Work. A few of them are Danielle King, Van Breeding, Sue Cantrell, Maria Lewis, Chris Green, Matt Brown, Jenna Myer, the Appalachian Media Institute, The Chorus Foundation, the Appalachian Funders Network, LENOWISCO Health District, and USAP, the organization in Letcher County that originally commissioned Needle Work.

​Our first performances took place in the fall of 2017. Rehearsals began months before. And the writing process began months before that. Needle Work has been both the hardest play Higher Ground has had to perform, and the play that has been in production the longest. If it weren’t for the seriousness of the issue and the goodness of the people who invited us to come to their communities to present the work, we would have laid Needle Work to rest long ago. 

But we didn’t. Higher Ground kept going where we were invited. So I’d like to thank these folk, who performed Needle Work in one or more of its ten performances: Adam Brock, Adeline Allison, Alex Hamm, Alexia Ault, Andrew Saylor, Ashley Bledsoe, Bennie Massey, Brianna Perez, Cade Pennington, Carrie Billett, Cassidy Wright, Cheyenne Coogle, Cindy Brock, Cindy Parker Allison, Devyn Creech, Elana Scopa Forson, Elizabeth Mona Lisa Floyd, Frank Goodwyn, Greg Hollins, Joy Pennington, Kristie Rodgers, Kyle Allison, Logan Turner, Mariah Farmer, Marsha Griffey, Megan Duff, Nick Cornett, Rick Brock, Rodion Svynarenko, Ronnie Walker, Rut Melton, Sandra Goodwyn, Shane Vanover, Shaylan Clark, Shyla Blevins, Tara Smith Frehling, Teresa Mimes, Tyler Smith, and Whitney Barger. I have so much respect for you, and so much appreciation of your talent, heart, and commitment.

​In the spring of 2016, Higher Ground cast members Devyn Creech and Alexia Ault created several podcasts of interviews with Higher Ground cast members and re-creations of scenes from Higher Ground plays. The podcast, called Shew Buddy! was also broadcast on local community radio station WMMT in Whitesburg. Shew Buddy! which ran for x episodes, and was one of a number of new types of projects taken on by Higher Ground during 2016.

In 2016, Higher Ground was a co-sponsor of the first Hurricane Gap Community Performance Institute. The Hurricane Gap Community Performance Institute is a place for community theater practitioners, community members, artists, teachers, and students to share skills and experiences, learn more about using theater to tell community stories, and build a network of collaborators and friends. Several past Higher Ground collaborators, including Robert Martin, Kevin Iega Jeff, and Richard Geer worked with community performance projects from Owsley, Clay, and Letcher counties, among others on workshops in acting, playwriting, lighting design, and other elements of theater production. 
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Higher Ground 6: Life is Like a Vapor was written by Higher Ground community members in the spring and summer of 2016 specifically for performance at Hurricane Gap. Life is Like a Vapor was by far the shortest Higher Ground at its premiere, and is largely comic, but with serious undertones. The play depicts the life of a woman named Sweet Betty, and takes place at her funeral. The five-times married Betty is presented largely as a comic figure, but one steeped in traditional healing, modern understanding of biology, a staggering capacity for love and teaching, and, as is revealed in Life is Like a Vapor, a history as a survivor of domestic violence. Betty’s ability to combine traditional engagement with the natural world, an understanding of science and how to teach it, and a brilliant sense of timing allowed Higher Ground to engage with difficult issues in a way that allows a broad community cross-section to absorb and reflect on the issues. Betty, who began as a character in Higher Ground 5:Find A Way, has had many loves in her life. She has been a folk healer, entrepreneur, sex educator, and keeper of mountain wisdom generally. She experienced many near-death experiences before her demise, and in Life Is Like A Vapor, community members recount many of them. The fifty-minute play also incorporates the work of local musicians and singers. 

​Photos by Willa Johnson, Jennifer McDaniels, Robert Gipe, Carrie Billett, and others.

One of Find A Way's performances was part of a conference produced by Higher Ground in partnership with Appalshop’s Appalachian Media Institute, the STAY (Stay Together Appalachian Youth) Project and other youth-led organizations in the Appalachian region. That conference, It's Good To Be Young in the Mountains (IG2BYITM), was youth-led in its design and production, and presented some of the best in the next generation of Appalachian art and artists, music and musicians. 

​IG2BYITM also brought young artists and activists together to discuss sustainable food and adventure tourism, sex education, social justice, LGBTQ activism, financial planning, and other issues pertinent to youth across the bounds of gender, race, and economic strata in the region. 

​Over 250 young people attended IG2BYITM and plans for further programming continue. Carrie Billett served as coordinator of IG2BYITM, and developed an innovative participatory social media campaign for the project. 

One of the characters in Find A Wayis a woman named Sweet Betty, created by Carrie Billett and Elana Scopa Forson. Betty is a mountain woman full of story and talk and a great willingness to share what she knows with the next generation. The continuing adventures of Sweet Betty would become a part of Higher Ground’s next two plays. Betty proved to be a very active woman, even after her funeral, as we would see in Higher Ground’s sixth play, Life Is Like A Vapor.
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​In early 2014, the National Endowment for the Arts Our Town program funded Higher Ground’s fifth play as well as a regional conference called It’s Good To Be Young In The Mountains. Next generation artists created the play Find A Way, with support from professional artists Higher Ground had worked with previously. 

Photos by Carrie Billett, Lauren Adams Arney, Chris Jones, Sierra Hatfield, Robert Gipe, and others.

Austin Rutherford & Devyn Creech directed with the support of Robert Martin. Sierra Hatfield choreographed with the support of Kevin Iega Jeff. Justin Taylor was the musical director with the support of Ann Schertz. Nick Cornett designed the lighting and set with the support of Maranda Debusk. Carrie Billett, with support from Robert Gipe, was the lead playwright on Find A Way. The title song for the production was written by Kenny Colinger.

Find A Way addressed issues of economic hardship, family discord, gender and sexuality. A cast and crew of fifty performed the play for over 2000 people in seven performances in three states during 2015. Find A Way took a youth perspective on the public schools, the challenges of being in relationship with liars, and the difficult pass our local economy has come to. 

​Find A Waywas presented at the Alternate ROOTS annual meeting of artists from throughout the South, and at an Appalachian Theater conference at Emory & Henry College in Virginia. 

​As part of developing Find A Way, Cornett and Creech worked with students at Harlan County High School to create Lockdown, the follow-up to the preceding year’s Solving For X. 

​Several of the participants in the high school project also participated in writing and art classes during the summer of 2014 and acted in Find A Way during the Spring of 2015.

​Photos by Chris Jones, Melissa Grogan Gore, Tom Hansell, Robert Gipe, Tommie Rodgers, Maria Lewis, Candra Miller, Lauren Adams Arney, Jeanne Marie Hibberd, Chris Green, and others.

Rehearsals for Foglights, the fourth Higher Ground community performance, began August 11that the Eastern Kentucky Social Club in Lynch, Kentucky. Sixty community members came together over the next six weeks to create an original community musical built from local stories and songs. For most of the early weeks of rehearsal, actors worked on individual scenes and monologues with director Richard Geer of Community Performance International and stage managers Maranda DeBusk and Austin Rutherford, and it was not until late August and early September that the cast came together to assemble the show. Throughout the rehearsal period, cast assembled for music rehearsals. Ann Schertz, a Southeast Kentucky Community & Technical College professor of music, served as music director for the production which included nine songs. Four of the songs were original to the production. Schertz wrote “Wings to Fly,” which closed the first act.

​ Justin Taylor, who like Schertz has been involved in Higher Ground since its beginnings in 2005, wrote two songs: “River Taught Me to Run,” and “My Way Home.” Ryan Coots, one of the summer art and theater students, wrote a fourth song, “Pile It Up,” inspired by the junk-filled stage set and the play’s central question: what to keep and what to throw away. Other songs in the production included Caroline Herring’s “Traveling Shoes” and the traditional hymn “Meet Me In the Morning.” Schertz assembled a band of local musicians to provide instrumental backing to the cast’s singing, and later in the rehearsal period, CPI brought in choreographer Kevin Iega Jeff to provide movement to accompany the cast’s singing. During rehearsals, choreography, acting, and music came together to create a new scene, the wordless action that accompanied “My Way Home.” In that scene, high school student Foster Colvin plays a young man who had not fit in Harlan County and had moved to Lexington to open a successful flower business only to return to take care of his ailing coal miner father, visits his father’s grave before leaving again. Suitcase in hand, on the brink of leaving, the young man is showered by flowers from the entire cast as they sing the words to the Justin Taylor composition “My Way Home:”
 
I think of all the love I’ve counted out
The people never taken in
I’ve been here for the ups and downs
But you’re still wond’ring where I’ve been
 
And now I’m staring down the lines
Of a dim, forsaken road
I may lose the day – I may stumble my way
But I’ll find my own way home
 
As the song ends, the cast turns and extends hands to the audience. The compactness of the set and seating design allowed cast members to actually take the hand of our audience, community members, most of them, many of whom were weeping at the close of the show. It is a powerful dramatic moment, and one that evolved as a collaborative act during rehearsals.

​Foglights, opened Thursday September 19th at the Eastern Kentucky Social Club in Lynch, Kentucky. Over sixty community residents worked with Director Richard Geer and SKCTC Professor of Music Ann Schertz to produce Foglights. The script for Foglightswas written by Higher Ground cast members and area high school and community college students with support from CPI, and mixes stories from Harlan County’s dramatic history with scenes exploring the fault lines and bridges between the generations in contemporary Harlan County. The musicians and storytellers in Foglightsdramatize the pressures and joys of living in today’s coalfields. The Eastern Kentucky Social Club, the site of Foglightsopening night, is an African-American organization with chapters across the United States. From its headquarters in Lynch, the EKSC helps black families with Harlan County roots stay connected with each other and the homeplace. After playing to capacity crowds made up of family and friends of the cast, visiting former community residents, arts and Appalachian Studies aficionados, and folks from other communities looking to learn how to do their own community performances, Foglights traveled to Pine Mountain Settlement School for shows on the afternoons of September 28thand 29th. Pine Mountain Settlement School, an environmental education and community center on the north side of Pine Mountain, celebrating its centennial in 2013 staged Foglights outdoors under a large circus tent, and the performances included picnics afterwards. A festive carnival atmosphere prevailed.