Owsley County students shine in documentary on rural pride
Owsley County High School students take center stage in a 1 hour 25 minute and 40 second special that turns theater and music into a rebuttal to rural stereotypes.
Shiners: Voices from Owsley County, a 1 hour 25 minute and 40 second special, is streaming nationwide on PBS and puts Owsley County High School students at the center of the story. The local public television program, presented by KET, follows students as they write and perform a play about growing up in rural Appalachia.
PBS says the film uses original and traditional music as the students travel from their small town to Kentucky’s high school theater competition. That trip gives the documentary its shape: a local stage production becomes a public performance for a county that is usually discussed from the outside.
The film also keeps Owsley County’s harder realities in view. PBS says the students are overcoming problems of addiction in one of the nation’s poorest counties, a detail that grounds the story in the pressures facing many Eastern Kentucky families. Even with that backdrop, the documentary centers capability and voice, showing students not as a statistic but as young people writing their own script about home.
Filmmaker Seth McClellan made the project for Thorn Creek Productions. McClellan has produced, directed, shot and edited films that have screened at film festivals, in schools and on television, and Shiners extends that work to Owsley County’s students, who use the theater competition to present their community on their own terms.
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