So goes the Friday night marching orders of Dave Foster, the earnest but tormented high school band director in "The Halftime Show."

Set in a "Post-Racial" South that's part melting pot, part powder keg, "The Halftime Show" is a dramatic television series about a drug-addicted high school band director whose own courage and character is tested by the daily demands of his troubled music students and the discovery that the student needing him most is the daughter he never knew - but that's only "Half" the story.

On closer inspection, "The Halftime Show" reveals a broader theme that explores the very question Creator Stacey Newsome Santiago asked when she first wrote the pilot.

"Initially I wrote it to take place in the Old South, the South of my parents and grandparents; where kids were bussed for miles to integrate the schools," says Santiago, herself raised in North Alabama (Muscle Shoals). "But that's been done before. Intolerance on that scale has been examined in television and movies for years. Then I thought, 'Well, what does racism look like today?'"

Instead, Santiago set "The Halftime Show" in present-day America and challenges viewers to explore a current and unchartered frontier in which the brutal images of lynchings and race riots are mostly relegated the collective memory of earlier generations. Framed against the merger of two racially progressive, but economically disparate schools, it's now the poor kids that are bussed to an affluent school.

Santiago maintains her intent is not to deny that racism exists, but rather examine and redefine how it is expressed and perceived in an America progressive enough to elect a black president.

"Racism obviously still exists, and we saw glimpses of that leading up to the election- not through acts of violence but rather verbal rhetoric and slips of the tongue. What truly divides us now is less about black and white than it is about green. The divisions never went away, they just evolved from racial to financial."

Economic strife is an ongoing theme of conflict between the characters in "Halftime," but Santiago ultimately intends to tap into what unites them through the unique metaphor of a dysfunctional musical ensemble drawn from personal experience.

"Trombone," Santiago laughs when asked which instrument she played. "And certainly The Halftime Show was inspired by my own experience in marching band where the love of music and the deep affection we had for each other transcended all differences. Hopefully that's where America's headed."

"The Halftime Show" was internationally recognized in the 2008 People's Choice Awards and New York Television Festival's Series Spinoff Contest. A four-minute teaser of the program is exclusively available to media outlets at http://www.staceysantiago.com/halftime

Contact: Fifth Quarter Productions
917-312-7058
E-mail: halftime@staceysantiago.com
On the Web: http://www.staceysantiago.com/halftime
Preview a Demo of the Show at : http://www.staceysantiago.com/halftime

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