Some eighth grade students from Lake Michigan Catholic Schools will be taking part in the National History Day competition next month. Teacher Ginger Hysell tells WSJM News Lila Baliunas, Hannah Hysell, Josephine Marsh, and Mary Riley won their category at the state level last month with performance exploring how Diego Rivera’s “Man at the Crossroads” controversy with the Rockefellers, as well as Russia’s 1959 tour of the Bolshoi Ballet in America, show different aspects of the role of art as propaganda during the cold war. Hannah Hysell told us more about the upcoming event.
“The National History Day competition is basically a competition between students from around the country, and some international students, and you submit a historical project that is based off of research and is submitted in many different mediums,” Hysell said.
The program invites students to explore a topic from history in several different ways, says Marsh.
“We decided on the category of performance, and we did ‘Arts as Propaganda: Communism Meeting Democracy Through the 20th Century,’ and we did scenes with Diego Rivera talking about his murals for pro-communism and anti-capitalism,” Marsh said.
Riley told us both history performances are done virtually.
“For the district competition, we did a table read,” Riley said. “So we went on Google Meet and we read the script, and then we submitted that video. For state, it was a little different, and we were able to actually film the performance with costumes and everything. For the nationals, we’re doing the same thing.”
Baliunas says they’d worked together before.
“All of us here were in the middle school drama program,” Baliunas said. “So it was really important to us that we get to do a performance like a play because we’re all very familiar with that.”
The students will submit the same performance piece for the National History Day competition next month. Teacher Ginger Hysell says they’re learning skills that will stay with them. The LMC students will be competing virtually at the nationals against more than 100 other projects in their category. For each category, only two move on from each of the 50 states and international countries and US territories. The competitions continue on into the high school level. You can find out more at NHD.org.
