Just got back from a trip to Northern California this weekend for a Theatre and Dance department reunion at my alma mater, Santa Clara University. The weather was perfect: crisp, blue skies and warm enough to show off the legs (if you saw me do the campus loop twice on Friday morning, you saw them). I got to see a ton of old friends at the reunion, as well as a bunch of former students. You see, this reunion was significant for a lot of reasons that I'll get into.
(One being this one: http://creativityinrealtime.blogspot.com/2013/10/im-dancer.html if you haven't checked it out already)
I taught there two years ago and then went back to give guest lectures and guest direct (along with a bunch of other folks) a project by my playwriting mentor who set me on this path. I have a lot of love for this place. It's interesting to walk on that campus as a professor as well as an alumnus.
One thing I should mention is that I was never a theatre major. I was an English major with a double minor in theatre and dance. I was also a pest. So much so that when I was asked to fill in for a teacher who had to take a last minute leave, I thought, "Do they even remember the kind of student I was?"
The Kind of Student I Was
I was so excited to be at a college where they offered dance classes that I practically wet myself, slipped on the puddle, broke my ankle and ended my entire college dance career on my first day in my first real Jazz I dance class. Okay, maybe that's a slight exaggeration. But I couldn't believe I could take a dance class and that it was included in the price of admission. I thought I had stepped into the greatest pile of poo that ever was.
I loved being a really bad dancer. Then I loved being a mediocre dancer. But I loved being a student choreographer with lots of ideas even more.
That lead to playwriting class. I wanted to take class because I was an English major and pretty sure I was a writer. I knew my parents would have something to say about me being an English major, who was moonlighting as a dancer and a theatre groupie. Up to that point (the Spring Term of my Sophomore year), I had just been a big groupie. I was just happy to be there. I started taking more dance classes. I took an Acting class and I was in the Fall show, The Tempest as a background native/dancer in a loin cloth. My parents actually came to that show only because they happened to be passing through. I'm sure they were horrified. I knew I belonged in the theatre. I just didn't know as what. So it made sense to take a class in Playwriting because I was a writer and I liked being in the theatre. Plus, the teacher was some guy from Yale who was guest teaching for the first time.
Erik Ehn walked into that class room (our theatre's rehearsal hall). I looked at him: bald head under a baseball cap and probably shlumpy jeans with some sort of t-shirt or long sleeved shirt.
"I'm a playwright, " I said to myself. He hadn't opened his mouth or given us an assignment or proved how brilliant he was yet. He just was there, standing in front of me. From that moment on, I would hunt Erik down in the hallways and in the green room. I seriously stalked him because even though I didn't know how important he was and would be in the world of theatre, I just knew that he was great. He wasn't one of those professors that gets personal or invites you into their life. I'm like that as a professor, but he wasn't. But what he gave me was the shiniest key that opened up the brightest door in my life.
Every Spring for the next two years, I would work with Erik on an independent study. I can't believe I convinced him or the department to let me do that. I figured the next step would be workshopping a new play. He supervised me. I rehearsed my actors from 11pm-1am and my friend directed us. I was in heaven! Then my Senior year, I decided that I wanted to put the three worlds together: Theatre, Dance and English. I would write poems and set them to music and dance. I wrote the poems in my Advanced Poetry class and they all seemed to have images of something breaking through the surface or emerging. I called it breakthrough because that's what I was having.
When I approached the theatre department about wanting to have a Senior Recital (something all of the Senior Theatre MAJORS had), I was told no. Theatre Minors don't get recitals.
My reply was something like: "Yeah, but some of those guys don't even really want to put on a show. Here you have someone who works hard and has such passion for what they're doing. Shouldn't you make an exception purely based on that?"
Now you understand when I say I can't believe they asked me back to teach.
Okay, I was told. You can do a presentation, but it can't be held in the studio theatre where all of the recitals are held. And you can't have lighting and sound designers assigned. You have to do it completely on your own.
"Fine." I wasn't going to let them beat me.
And you can't call it a recital. And you can't call it a production of the Theatre and Dance department because then we get to tell you what it can or can't be.
"Fine." I hated being told what to do, as you can imagine. The English department was easy. It would now be the kick off event to the Senior Poetry Readings because even as a production, it was a poetry reading. And I think I was co-advised by my poetry professor and by Erik. And I did it. Myself. And I wrote this essay and stuck it on the back of my program (editing it based on the fact that it needed to fit onto one page--to this day, I'm obsessed with word economy):
http://iambacktolife.blogspot.com/2012/05/thoughts-from-my-22-year-old-self.html
I remember being in rehearsal when I read the essay to the group. My friend Heather said that I shouldn't include it in the program because someone was bound to get offended. I thought about that, but also thought that it wasn't my role to just go along with everything. I had fought hard for this breakthrough and for my personal breakthrough. And the point was to break through. To tear apart the surface and emerge! For that reason alone, the essay was in.
After the performance, the head of the department came up to me and said, "That was the most creative thing to come out of this department in five years."
I had broken through.
Back to the present...
When I arrived on campus, I met up with a pal and this pal mentioned that there was a hullabaloo in the department because of a letter. Apparently a student had slipped a letter that criticized the department in a very detailed, line item by line item fashion. The student had made the mistake of slipping the letter under the office door during the senior graduation dinner. Bad timing.
The ruckus that this letter has caused seems to be incredibly divisive. The current head of the department was incredibly hurt by the contents of the letter. And then another professor had lead the charge to find out who had written the letter. Several students have been involved. Hurt feelings on both sides.
That weekend I ended up catching up with several friends--both students and faculty members. The subject of the letter inevitably came up. I heard both sides of the argument. I was incredibly disturbed by the whole thing. I was disturbed that a place that I love and hold dear to my heart, a place that changed the course of my life, that educated me in too many ways to count was now a house divided. I was ashamed at the behavior of both parties. I was disappointed by the shared ill will. I don't know how anyone works in an environment like that.
I know that I wouldn't have survived in an environment like that. I know that the course of my life would not have been changed in an environment with an uncooperative administration that refused to hear my complaints. I know that it would have been impossible to love what I was doing in an environment like that.
My whole philosophy with my students is about finding their voice and using their voice. One's voice is the truth and essence of who they are. It's them saying that they are valid and worthwhile. And it's my job to facilitate the finding and exploring of that voice. But it's not my place or my right to silence it. It is my place to tell them when they are being disrespectful and how they're being disrespectful. It's my place and my responsibility to come to the table prepared to listen and to be heard and to allow for the same on the other end. It's my job to teach a student how to do that. To lead by example.
I'm not more disappointed by a teacher's role in this because I'm taking sides. I'm disappointed because we should know better than to engage in ways unworthy of our position and our age. Even though I am not taking sides, I have been on the other side. My mere presence in life is disruptive. I am an articulate, outspoken, self-possessed brown person who feels entitled to the life he leads. My feet are not bound and I do not work in the back of the house. I am purely front of the house. I am front and center. The mere sight and sound of me is disruptive.
I had a conversation (without one mention of the letter) with a friend that weekend about how disruptive I am. My friend said that things needed to be disrupted. It was important and essential.
This person has taught me a lot through their friendship over the years and I tend to agree with what this person says.
That's our role as an artist. That's what that 22 year old kid wanted to do. And I'm talking about both 22 year old kids--the one who wrote the letter and the one who wrote the essay at the back of the program of his senior poetry project. They both knew what they were doing and with full awareness went into action. They both labored over their words. They both set the right tone and were articulate. But they both wrote loud words. Thoughtful, hopefully as well. But words that were meant to have impact with great purpose.
I don't know what the student who wrote the letter was thinking. I don't know who that student is. But if the student's words are having this much of an effect, that student must have written one hell of a letter. Angry, definitely. You don't send a letter the night before graduation if you're not pretty upset.
The one thing I keep thinking about is what this person had to gain. Other than getting something off of their chest. Nothing. This person is now a graduate. This person could have said nothing. Not out of being respectful and polite, but out of being disengaged. But even at the end of their scholastic career, this person cared enough to say something. Anonymously, yes. But then it becomes about that particular student if that student chooses to identify themselves.
But they could have said nothing.
Why say something? Why go through the effort if you have nothing to gain? Even the desire to send a final middle finger is a fleeting reward. I would hope that this person stuck their neck out and hurt a lot of people's feelings for a good reason. After all, these professors put themselves on the line every day for students. They sacrifice their personal lives, their professional lives to teach. To instruct the leaders of the future. They teach because they are engaged in the active process of educating students and creating self-motivated, forward-thinking artists with a conscience and a belief in something beyond themselves. It's more than just getting a role or having a place in the hierarchy or being favored. These educators want their students to succeed beyond them--both after they've left the theatre department and hopefully beyond their own limitations. Good teachers, like good parents, want their kids to be better than them.
So why would a kid who was under the advisement and care of these professors speak their mind?
If they've learned anything in their four years, the only reason worthy of all this disruption would be to make sure that it was better for those future students.
But I guess we'll never know.
And we still haven't answered the real question:
Why?
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