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Wednesday, September 26, 2001
Contact: Peter Bailley
news@knox.edu
309-341-7715
The trouble with being inspiring is that people want to give you awards — awards you're not always sure you deserve because, after all, you're only human. Not coincidentally, "The Trouble with Being Inspiring" is the title of an award-winning play by Helen Kilian, a first-year Knox College student from Wamego, Kansas. Download 300 dpi photo
Kilian, who has cerebral palsy, wrote "The Trouble with Being Inspiring" about the dilemmas faced by a disabled high school student who's not comfortable with either the recognition or the abuse that she gets from classmates and teachers.
The play won first prize in the 2001 Playwright Discovery competition, sponsored by VSA Arts, a national organization that offers arts-based programs for people with disabilities. The competition drew more than 100 student-written plays about disabilities.
Kilian was cited by U.S. Representative Lane Evans (17th District, Illinois) in the Congressional Record on Sept. 28, 2001. "This is a tremendous accomplishment for any playwright, but this success is an even greater milestone for Helen. Not only is Helen, who is 18, at the beginning of her writing career, but also faces her own challenges. ... [She] has met the challenges that accompany cerebral palsy and turned her experiences into a tool to help all of us reexamine how we view disabilities." Full text of statement (PDF from Congressional Record).
As part of the award, VSA Arts is paying for a professional production of the play Oct. 1 at The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC. The award includes a $750 scholarship and transportation for Kilian and her mother to attend the performance.
Kilian says she's aware of the self-referential situation — getting an award for a play about a character who's not sure that she deserves public acclaim. "Friends have congratulated me for winning the award, and that's nice," Kilian says. At the same time, Kilian says she felt odd "when someone compared me to Joni Eareckson Tada, a famous artist who's paralyzed and uses her teeth to hold her brush."
Kilian says she wrote the play in three days last year, after seeing a school poster about the contest. "It was part of an independent study with Barbara Fanshier," now retired from teaching at Wamego High School. Kilian also has had poems published, and she wrote for her high school newspaper and yearbook. She plans to major in English writing at Knox.
Related Pages
More about VSA Arts and the Playwright Discovery Award
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