I missed seeing the shooting stars from the Perseid Meteor Showers this week. It always seems to be cloudy in my part of the world during these events, or maybe I just don’t have the patience to hang around long enough for the clouds to end. But I did witness shooting stars off another kind last weekend, at a performance by the Hickman County Performing Arts Group. It was their final performance before several of the teens go off to the rest of their lives. Their story is amazing – their journey has been something to witness.
It was a little over a year ago when a few teens came up with the idea of putting on shows to raise funds for their senior year at the local high school. We, as part of the board at the local Ag Pavilion and Fairgrounds, had worked with the local 4-H and other groups to sponsor a Youth Arts Festival for a couple of years. We wanted to give the kids, from kindergarten and up, a place to show their artistic side, make a little money, and earn some prizes. We had no idea what we were starting. The participants showed up with drawings, photographs, paintings, jewelry, baking, and sculpture, along with performances in dance, music and theatre. It was a great day.
Shortly after the festival, the teens asked if we would let them create a few of their own musical shows. All we really had to do was open the doors, hang around for a couple of hours, supervise the building of sets and give a little advice when needed. The kids wrote the script, chose the music, designed the program, painted the scenery and roped their parents into helping with concessions and taking up money at the door. They flooded social media and local newspapers with promotion for their first show, back in August of 2024 and they were off at a gallop.
Their first show was called Artist Showcase, and it lived up to its name. Raw talent stepped on stage, a few performers for their very first time. The rafters shook from the percussion of a rock band, an elegant young dancer graced the stage, and a college student’s performance on the old, neglected piano made the audience forget it was just an old, out-of-tune instrument . And then there was the singing. We discovered a gold mine of talent, right here in our midst. One of the most stunning performances came from a shy, young girl who had never sung in public and now has taught herself to play guitar and is finding solo gigs all over town.
As the performances came and went, the loyal fans watched shyness melt away, confidence increase, command of the stage blossom and new faces appear to make us forget for a couple of hours that we were just watching a group of kids we had known since their preschool days. By the fourth or fifth show, the group had met their fundraising goal. On their own, they decided to use part of the remaining funds for a scholarship to help a senior further his or her arts journey. Their journey took a few detours, as they branched out into performances and volunteer work at other venues. Some of them performed at Christmas on the Square and the Ag and Arts Tour After Concert, helped with the Haunted Tour of the Square, sang on the local radio and at other events, big and small. They shone in the high school plays, and the leader of the group was grand marshal of the Halloween parade.
The seventh show, a salute to rock and roll, was supposed to be their last, but they decided to do a retrospective of all their performances. Anniversary Anthem was presented last week, a farewell to many and an introduction to the new host and a promise to continue the project. The remaining performers already have a lot of big ideas. There were some tears, but mostly there was pride – pride in the growth and maturity reached over the past year. They are all shooting stars, and we can’t wait to see where they land.
