Why Theatre Education?

Spring of 2010 I heard Pulitzer Prize winning author David K. Shipler speak on the multifold causes of poverty in America. Two points he made are as follows:

1.) Primary school children in low-income areas will respond to the question, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” with professions like astronaut, doctor, and teacher. Most high school students in the same area will respond to that question with jobs that do not require a college degree and sometimes do not require a high school diploma.

2.) Many adults in employment-training programs are unable to participate in mock interviews or mock presentations, because they stare at the floor in silence unable to speak.

These two points grasp a wide handful of the reasons why I want to work in theatre education, a craft which teaches confidence, presence, communication skills, collaborative skills, people skills, analytical skills, creativity, imagination, problem solving, and an appreciation for the craft itself.

I am fascinated by the questions: How far does theatre translate? How far do these skills of the page, of the stage, of behind-the-scenes go?

How far translates being able…

to imagine?

to create a work of art with dozens of people from a spectrum of skill sets and communication methods?

to transform ink into empathy into action into giving a damn?

to stand in front of people and speak, feet solid, hands and breath steady, knowing that what you say is worth listening to?

to mess up, horribly even, in front of a crowd, pick yourself up, and continue?

I believe theatre translates far enough to allow many of those students Shipler interviewed to continue to answer astronaut, doctor, and teacher and maybe even actor, director, stage manager, or designer. I believe theatre goes far enough to allow many of those adults Shipler observed to look their audience in the eyes and speak with heads high.

I believe theatre goes far enough to give communities the tools to build a better future by meeting individuals where they are today.

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NCT Week 1

Week 1: May 31-June 4 (Because of Memorial Day, the week is only 4 days instead of the usual 5.)

Age Group of Class: 3^rd-5^th Graders. 7-10 year olds.

Tuesday May 31 Day 1:

This summer I am interning with the Nashville Children’s Theatre (NCT), helping to teach weeklong drama day camps to 5-18 year olds. Today is the first day. God, give me strength. They are going to eat me alive.

Kids are not like other tiny terrifying creatures—snakes, spiders, baby sharks; they are not more afraid of you than you are of them. In fact, kids smell fear, and the more fear they smell, the more powerful they become. It is like Magneto with metal; teachers’ fear is kids’ material for world domination. I know because I have been in school since I was 5 years old, and I have witnessed teacher after substitute after coach being overtaken by a classroom of small bodies. Images of these teachers' final days bit my nails to the quick as I wait by the glass doors of the Theatre on the first day of Drama Camp, heart racing, intestines twisting, waiting for the parents to walk through the fragile barrier and release their offspring onto me.

I have worked with kids before—swim lessons, babysitting, little sister—but I have never co-led a classroom before, and certainly not a classroom in theatre, a craft that brings out the best (i.e. empathy, creativity) and the worst (i.e. egotism, manipulation) in people. Furthermore, I am working with 3^rd-5^th graders this week, 7-10 year olds, the age children run, crazy-legged and unaware, out of the rye field.  I am writing my obituary.

Wednesday June 1:

Surprise! I survived the first day. Someone telling a story about how she almost died is just one long spoiler. Let me guess: in the end you survive. Thanks for ruining the story by getting up to tell it.

I am working after-care this week, and NCT has a no-lap-sitting policy, which is easy to understand because you have one lap and many kids. But it's so hard to practice, especially when you’re sitting on the floor and the little girl is four and she climbs into your lap and you have to pick her up, setting her beside you, saying, “You can sit next to me, but you can’t sit on my lap.” And she looks up at you with wide brown eyes, not understanding. So again, she stands up and tries to sit in your lap, and again you have to pick her up, setting her down, saying, “You can sit next to me, but you can’t sit on my lap,” when all you want to do is to wrap your arms around her and cradle her in your lap, chin resting on top of her braided head; because she is four and even though she may not know much about the dangers of this world, she does know about some of its comforts, and one of those comforts is the warm nest of a lap.

Thursday June 2:

I am not that ra-ra, fun, kid person. I connect best with people older than me, and throughout my life, people have assumed my age older than its years. So if interacting with adults is my comfort zone, then working with children is me entering the jungle, spear and war paint left behind. And always before entering that jungle, I am afraid the kids won’t like me. I won’t be fun enough. I won’t be able to connect with them or to communicate with them on their emotional, mental level, knowing that that failure is my failure. Because for one year of my life, I was 7 years old, then 8 years old, then 9, then 10. But those kids have never been 21 years old. So if I cannot connect or communicate with them, then that is my failure for not remembering what I once lived.

Despite me not being that ra-ra, fun, kid person, I do like kids, and for some reason which I cannot understand, they like me, too. Exhibit A: Today the hugging began— those spontaneous bursts of affection when a kid comes up and hugs me without any known reason. It is heartwarming and confusing.

Friday June 3:

I HATE traffic. I want to throw a baseball into its face.

Today the kids performed the play they have been preparing all week, Anansi and the Five Yam Hills. Very proud of them.

Official NCT Name Badge

Returning Home

Last Night in Selly Oak.

I expected to miss England. I expected to miss my house, my neighborhood, Selly Park, my favorite spot in the library on the 3^rd floor. I expected to miss trains, walking 30 minutes to get anywhere, English accents, electric kettles, tea, pubs, my cupboard of a room. I expected to miss Canvas and Subway City on Tuesdays, Improv and Snobs on Wednesdays, Canvas and Nightingale’s on Thursdays, and house parties, whether planned or spontaneous, Mondays through Saturdays. I expected to miss being so close to Europe. I expected to miss saying “proper,” “knackered,” and “I can’t be bothered.” I expected to miss-so-deeply-that-it-is-more-appropriate-to-call-it-grieving the people who I held closer than the shirt on my back but could not pack into my suitcases along with my socks and worn jeans.

But I was wrong. After the first week home, I realized I did not miss a thing; I did not miss a single person. I had expected sadness. I had expected nostalgia. I had expected grief even, but I felt none of those things.

All I felt was anger.

Seething, aimless, full-bodied anger. I wanted to lash out, fists flying at whatever or whoever yanked me back to this country and threw me so seamlessly back into my old life. It was as though I cannonballed off the tallest high-dive and landed in the water below without a splash or even causing a ripple.

I returned home to America and everything was exactly as I left it eight months ago. The same house. The same street. The same bedroom. The same Tennessee summer heat. The same cashiers at the grocery store. Even the dust powdering my dresser seemed to stay at the same untended thickness.

It was as though England never happened, as though those eight months of life never existed, and all I had to show for them were pictures of someone who looks a lot like me with people who I think I’ve seen somewhere before in places I imagined going. At best, those months were a dream or perhaps a memory woven from wishes of an adventure that never began.

Three weeks ago from today on May 23, 2011, belted inside a winged metal tube, I catapulted from the life I had lived for eight months back to the life I had lived for 20 years. It took only a few hours, and once those hours were over, I was expected to go back to my old life, to slide right in as though those eight months across the Atlantic had never occurred. And that is exactly what I did. I landed. I reeled from culture shock for a brief moment. I hugged my family. And the next day, I began an internship with the Nashville Children’s Theatre. I worked every weekday. I spent the weekends with my family. I saw a few friends. I slipped right back into my life as though my shadow had stayed behind, keeping my place, knowing I would return exactly the same.

But I am not the same person who left here in September 2010. Between then and now, eight months of life passed during which I created a life in England; I traveled the UK and parts of Europe, mostly on my own; I performed slam poetry at Hit the Ode; I pulled myself out of a depression; I waged war against my second biggest fear—self worth; I turned 21; I discovered a little more about who/what/how God is; I learned more about myself, about people, and about the world; and I lived more opportunity than whole lifetimes contain. But this place doesn’t recognize those eight months or what happened during that time. Only the mirror offers slight acknowledgement, reflecting longer hair and paler skin, but that is where its generosity ends.

People keep asking me, “How was England? How was England?” I don’t know how to answer them. How do I answer how eight months of my life “was”? So I give them the short-answer, “England was life-changing.” What that means would take hours to explain. 

Before I left England, I was a facebook addict. Then, I returned to America and avoided facebook for consecutive days. I did not want to see the people who I had not wanted to leave. I did not want to see their faces frozen in still images when I was used to seeing them next to me, breathing, speaking, laughing, changing with life’s animation. Then there are the pictures from socials, parties, and encounters taken after I left, pictures that I would have been in but was instead thousands of miles away where the people  in the pictures couldn’t follow me. Now, this place can’t accommodate the person who returned. How could it accommodate them, ones who had never been here? Those pictures on facebook hurt. Sometimes, it is a sharp, hot punch in the stomach; other times, it is a raw, heavy ache in the gut. Either way, I don’t want to feel that hurt.

I suck at this transition.

I rarely cry, and when I do, I usually tell myself, “Of all the things in life to cry over, this is not one of them.” Now, I have a self-excusable reason to cry, and I have yet to well-up, much less shed a tear. I got the closest to crying at my farewell party, but even then no tears came.

Yesterday, almost three weeks after returning home, I finally finished unpacking. Since third grade, I have kept a memory box of each school year, and my junior year in England was no exception. I went through that memory box yesterday, sifting through bus tickets, plane tickets, train tickets, play tickets, play programs, postcards, letters, travel itineraries, notes, maps…Then, I shoved the contents back into the box and slammed the heavy cardboard on my desk. It hurt. It hurt too much to go through those memories. If I cried at appropriate times, then I would have cried then. Instead, I put my palm to my chest, expecting it to pass right through space and into the air where my back should have been, but was surprised when it was stopped by warm solid, thinking at first that it must have been some trick, some fault in physics, because for a moment, I just felt empty, seeing faces, so many faces of people who I do not want to have to learn what life is like without them just down the street, across the road, four blocks away.

They had a life to stay in England for. I had a life to return to America for.

They never planned on my coming; then they were surprised at the reality of my going.

But I planned two distinct, deliberate dates of arriving and departing: September 25, 2010 arrival; May 23, 2011 departure. My time always had an expiration date; it always existed on a count-down. I planned it that way.

But I didn’t plan for what happened in between.

I didn’t plan on falling in love with my life there; I didn’t plan for this pain of leaving that life.

As much as this pain hurts, I thank God for it twice as much as it aches. Because studying abroad was the hardest thing I had ever done, and this pain means that it was worthwhile— every moment of it.

Today, driving home from work, hot Tennessee wind in my face, sun setting to my right, and a country song crooning its whiskey sadness through the airwaves, I pictured myself going back to BSC this fall after being away for a year. I saw the bell tower. I saw the theatre. I saw the fountain, the library. I saw the Norton building. And for the first time since my family first drove onto BSC’s small grounds my senior year of high school, BSC didn’t feel like mine anymore. I had loved BSC like a best friend, and now it belonged to someone else, to the people who stayed, to the ones who will say they had four years there, not a broken three like me.

And for the first time since I returned to America, I felt that time abroad; I felt that year, those eight months. And it wasn’t an absence; it wasn’t a void; and it certainly was not a dream. That year finally felt real, warm and close by, as though if I stuck my hand out the window, I could run my fingers through its days, slide my hand along its highs and lows, feel the cooling and warming of the seasons. I could touch it, hold on to it, because it was real. It did happen.

Finally, that year, my year had landed. I spent the last three weeks so afraid that I had forgotten to pack it with me. But there it was, settling down, making itself comfortable, taking up space in my life. That year, that time was so big, so real, so full that it took me three whole weeks to pull it out of England, across the ocean, through North Carolina, and into the heart of Tennessee. I wrapped my arms around it, burying my face into it. Thank you for coming back to me.

P.S. I am now back to checking facebook. And I do miss people. I miss them/you terribly.

Every happiness is the child of separation

it did not think it could survive. And Daphne,

becoming a laurel, dares you to become the wind.

-Rainer Maria Rilke

My First View of England: September 26, 2010