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Park Hill High School has the right kind of trouble this week.

More than 100 Trojans will participate in the school’s production of “The Music Man” at 7:30 p.m. tonight, Friday and Saturday, Nov. 19 to 21.

For students, teachers and parents, the big, Broadway musical is the perfect showcase for the kind of quality education offered by Park Hill School District. It’s proof that the performing arts are still an integral part of the district, according to theater teacher Jennifer Sandau.

Taking a rest after working on sets in the high school’s darkened, expansive auditorium, Sandau talked about why art education is valuable in an age when standardized tests and core curriculum are ascendant.

“Our students are learning about other skills they’ll need throughout their lives,” Sandau said. “History, math, reading, teamwork, construction, business, project planning — most anything you can think of, they use in theater.”

The evidence of all that education swirled around Sandau on stage and in nearby rooms, as students built a Midwestern village, sewed costumes, set up the orchestra pit and ran cables for sound and lights.

Senior Mohamed “Mo” Sedky, 17, stands at the poised center of the drama storm at Park Hill High School this week.

Sedky plays Harold Hill, the drifter who rides into an early 20th-century Iowa town and offers — for a price — to head off potential trouble from a pool hall by organizing a marching band for the children.

Theater has an obvious educational value, Sedky said. He described how he recently applied algebraic problem-solving techniques while building a small home for the set.

“We were all standing around, not really knowing what to do, and I realized we could just take this one step at a time, like a math equation,” Sedky said. “Theater teaches people how to lead.”

Like the confident man he plays, Sedky isn’t quite what he appears. Though a longtime lover of plays and musicals, Sedky is planning to take the very unexpected path of joining the Army ROTC when he goes off to study early childhood education at the University of Missouri next fall.

“When I learned how hard it is to have a career in theater, I decided to focus on the military,” Sedky said.

Aside from learning hundreds of lines and dance moves so he can perform in virtually ever scene in “The Music Man,” Sedky is also the theater department’s shop foreman.

Sedky is a good example of how performing arts can have a positive impact on students, even those who don’t plan on making a career in that field, Sandau said.

“There’s a lot of students like that that take a lot of responsibility,” she said. “We do have students take ownership of what’s happening in the show.”

Staff writer Ray Weikal can be reached at 389-6637 or This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

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