How do you motivate a room of students in a college preparatory English class in a high-needs secondary school to study a challenging text? Through a partnership between the school and a dramaturgy project/theatre production at a nearby liberal arts college, students are motivated to do a close, textual analysis of the play The Plough and the Stars (1926). In this article Richard Pettengill, together with Dawn Abt-Perkins and Shannon Buckley, reflects on this program and the application of dramaturgical practices in schools.