Our Stories

“I think the arts are vital to schools,” said New York City actor Joshua Kane. “In fact, nothing has a greater capacity to energize and facilitate learning.”

Kane is a professional storyteller who most recently visited the Fox Cities Performing Arts Center in October to perform Edgar Allan Poe’s Tales of Terror. He has made a life and a career out of connecting audiences to the spoken word. For Kane, whether it is national TV commercials, audiobooks, voicing video games or performing in live arts experiences: his work is all about stories.

“The theater called to me very young,” Kane said. “It opened up a world of new doors and possibilities, more than I ever could have dreamed of.”

It would not be long before Kane learned just how effectively arts and education played hand in hand with one another.

The first performance he recalls ever attending was a one-woman show about Harriet Tubman. He was astounded by how many people this one person became. When he went home, he says he remembers trying to act it out and knowing it was something he wanted to do.

He would soon get his chance.

Kane’s first onstage experience was an elementary school production based on the life of a real person: Marian Anderson, the first African-American woman to sing at the Metropolitan Opera. (And, as fate would have it, Marian herself came to see the performance, Kane recalled.)

Learning about a real person by acting out her life was a spark of inspiration.

“The best part about being a child,” Kane said, “is the willingness and the ability to play. When we learn through play, we integrate our senses while we open our minds to new possibilities. Play is what encourages the ‘I can’ and the ‘I want.’ We need the fervor of a child to make the case for our passions to be heard.”

Experiencing the arts, whether by performing or absorbing them, is what transforms a moment – come and gone – into a memory that endures.

Kane dove headfirst into the pursuit of a life devoted to connecting people and creating culture. Culture, he said, is the word our society uses to describe arts education, especially the preservation of history and the promise of growth into the future.

“That’s what art and literature is for. It helps us to know we are not alone, that the experience we’re having, we’re not the only ones who have to deal with it. And if other people got through it, maybe there’s a pathway for us as well,” Kane said.

Kane’s career has always been deeply tied to the world of education, even leading him to become a Master Teaching Artist for the state of Connecticut.

“I never imagined that I would end up touring North America performing one-man theater shows, and that that would lead me to doing student matinees, bringing me full circle, back to those first performances I saw when I was in elementary school, that moved me to want to become an actor.”

He would develop one-man performances based on literary greats – hearkening back to the first spark for his childhood imagination: books – and he used his voice to bring in a whole new generation to discover that these stories have long been what connects us across time, and inspire us to forge our own ways ahead.

Joshua Kane’s inclusion in the Fox Cities P.A.C. Amcor Education Series lineup in October introduced that connection to another era of area students.

About 20 years ago, while he was touring a show called Gothic at Midnight: A Tribute to the Masters of the Macabre, he says he got a call from presenters in Wisconsin with a request.

The school system’s curriculum had shifted to place more of a focus on Edgar Allan Poe. So, he created Edgar Allan Poe’s Tales of Terror to bring illumination to the exciting work their curriculum was introducing to them.

Years later, in the 2024-25 Season, he brought this show to the Fox Cities Performing Arts Center, and he partnered with Appleton North High School for an extra, special collaboration.

Leading up to the date of his one-man show, Appleton North art students were presented with selections of Poe’s works to study, and they met with Kane over Zoom.

“We talked together about Gothic art, Gothic literature, and what ‘Gothic’ itself means. The atmospheric quality, the idea that a house or the wind or the weather could be characters in a story. And the students were invited to create magnificent works of art from their own imaginations,” said Kane.

Based on their readings and conversations with Kane, in combination with encouragement from their art teacher Elyse Lucas, the students were asked to create visual art that Poe inspired in them. The visual art pieces were encouraged to be representations of their emotional responses to the tales.

Luke, a student at Appleton North, said the experience made a difference.

On October 23, 2024, Luke and his peers gathered in the Kimberly-Clark Theater, along with other area high school classes, to attend an Amcor Education Series performance by Kane. First, they walked through an exhibition of the visual art that the Appleton North students had created, now displayed in gallery fashion. Then, they gathered as an audience for Kane’s live performance of Poe’s works, many of which directly inspired the students’ art.

Kane, in turn, was inspired by them.

“I took great inspiration from their art. When I arrived, I was given a tour of the pieces. It was the first time I got to see the work which was created. And their pieces actually affected the lighting that we chose for the show and [what] we projected on the wall. I allowed myself to be changed by the students’ art and to allow their work to feed into my process,” said Kane.

Luke said the combination of creating visual art and experiencing the live performance of Poe’s words had a greater impact than mere retention of the stories’ plots. He said it would affect his approach to future works.

“I feel like I will definitely think in different angles at what I want to complete because he talked about how, like, don’t be so literal. So, I feel like in the future when I’m drawing, I don’t have to always literally draw what I’m seeing, but I can kind of make it up with different angles.”

His peer, Michael, agreed.

“It’s good to be like more creative in a way, and like Joshua was talking about like how he wants you to be creative and think on your own and like really got the creative juices flowing, I guess, and made me think more about like what I would want to do, personally, for the project,” Michael said.

“It makes like everything, like, broader, I guess,” said fellow Appleton North student Grey. “Like, I have… [a] broader reach in how I look at things.”

Kane said that ultimately, performing in front of the students was the most rewarding and engaging experience, and went better than he could have imagined.

“From the very beginning, they were so rapt and attentive. I have not experienced that from young people at this level in years. During Cask of Amontillado, they were so invested in the images and language that I had the opportunity to slow it down a bit and allow the images to really register and let the words infect those imaginations and grow the stories in their minds. And that was a meaningful moment for me because it meant they valued the words. They cared about being here. It wasn’t just because the school brought them. They chose to be present, to participate, and to give their hearts and their attention.”

Kane said the invested hearts and minds of his young audience was proof of the effectiveness of the interplay of arts and learning.

“Technology has changed, but human beings really haven’t. And we are story-making animals,” he said.

Kane left the students with a powerful reminder of the arts’ ability to connect and inspire