How the Bard Saved Chatsworth High Alums Spacey, Winningham and Kilmer

Kevin Spacey knows exactly where everything began.

Gesturing to the stage at , he says: "It happened in this room. I actually can pinpoint that as the moment I realized I no longer wanted to be an actor, I was an actor."

Spacey is the executive producer of Shakespeare High, premiering at 8 p.m. Thursday on the Showtime cable channel. 

Featured are Spacey's other Chatsworth High classmates Mare Winningham and Val Kilmer.

The documentary tells the story of the 90th annual Drama Teachers Association of Southern California's Shakespeare Festival and how the competition enriches the lives of students "amidst personal troubles, including poverty, violence, gangs, drugs, absentee parents, as well as the troubles and hardships of adolescence."

"Tosh and Taco are sophomores from East LA and former gang members," according to the film's website. "Nicole’s family lives below the poverty line in the isolated, low-income desert community of Hesperia. Tommy is an energetic and spry redhead whose parents were former skin-heads before his dad left the family. Galvin and Melvin are twin brothers who moved in with their aunt and uncle after their father murdered their mother following a spiteful divorce."

Other famous graduates of this life-changing competition include: Cuba Gooding Jr., Richard Dreyfuss, Sally Field, Christina Applegate and Nicolas Cage.

See the video previews:

• ABC Nightline
• Shakespearehigh.org/

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