What it Took – Part II
It is a beautiful Friday afternoon, with loads of sunshine and a temperature of 51 degrees. Having just packed away my camper trailer for another season (a camper trailer which has never really gone anywhere, but in which my youngest son loves to spend summer evenings in the backyard), I’ve brewed myself a fresh cup of coffee and decided to sit and write on my back porch. The lawn is asking to be mowed, but I am betting that there will be no rain tonight and it can wait until tomorrow.
As usual, I am a Johnny-come-lately to the “what it takes” series of posts I’ve read. But none the less, I want to jump into the game. I call this series of posts my “what it took” series because I sense the end is coming. I’ve felt that way for some time now, but my ego has not yet let me give up totally. I’ve always had superficial reasons for taking that next show, but way deep down I know only too well that my primary reasons are because I love hanging around theatre people, especially in Buffalo where everyone is so nice, and because I do love acting. Before I begin, though, I think it’s worth placing all the efforts I have put into creating a career in theatre into some sort of personal perspective by trying to flesh out the formative forces in my life. Without understanding that core, I don’t think anything else I’d say about the matter would make any sense.
I have always seen my life through the prism of the spiritual. My mother, a very religious woman of Hispanic descent, is no doubt somewhat responsible for it, but since none of my brothers have followed anything like the same path I did, she can’t be held responsible for everything. Raised as a Roman Catholic in the pre-Vatican era, where Latin was the language of choice, I was always drawn to the sense of mystery and ritual of the church’s main service, the Mass. It was also really good theatre, and in its highest form, such as the Christmas or Easter High Mass, the drama, music and spectacle were second to none. Of course I didn’t hesitate when the time came to become a supporting actor, otherwise known as an altar boy, and I learned my blocking and lines to perfection (I can still recite the Confiteor and the Suscipiat with ease).
This upbringing also led me to the thought that I wanted to pursue a life which fulfilled a vocation, not just build a career. I spent my high school years studying for the Catholic priesthood, but by my senior year I was pretty much convinced I did not want to go any further in that direction. I am pretty sure that my initial impulse to pursue this idea came from the desire to enact the Mass and possess the doctrinal powers that come with it (later on I would come to read Jean Genet and see some of his works, and became captivated with his notion of turning the idea of “eating the god” up on its head). Transubstantiation is, after all, one hell of an idea.
As I left the notion of becoming a priest behind (it would many more years before I outgrew Catholicism), I took up the idea of being a teacher. I felt this was also a vocation, something more than a career. My father spent 33 years as a physical education teacher in the New York City Public School system (Aviation High School in LI City, right next to the space that MOMA Queens occupies) as well as teaching at York College, a CUNY branch in Jamaica. I also got a very fine college-prep education in high school. I was lucky to have a collection of really fine teachers. You might think that the education for a high school boy studying for the priesthood would be very conservative, but such was not the case. In 1966 as a freshman I was required to read books such as Catcher in the Rye and Too Late The Phalarope. We studied Marxist theory in philosophy side-by-side with theology. I took a month of Japanese. And as students we were allowed to conduct anti-Vietnam war rallies in the gym during our lunch time, with no censorship. We even had formal debates on the war, and I received some counseling from my teachers to help complete my application for 1-O Consciencious Objector status. All these experiences led me to start college as an education major and a vocation as a teacher.
My switch to theatre came in college. I arrived in college as the height of campus demonstrations against Vietnam began to subside. The Kent State shootings took place in May 1970, and I was a freshman the following September. Political activism, however, was still in the air, and I began to see the theatre as a means of political activism. Plays like The Zoo Story and Genet’s Deathwatch and The Balcony were produced when I was in school, and Shakespeare was also presented to me as a means of discussing and fomenting revolt. I abandoned a formal major in education to have more time to do theatre, but retained a major in English as well. In my time as an undergraduate, the idea of pursuing theatre as a career choice was not even discussed. I learned nothing about the business of theatre. I did it because I thought it was revolutionary, was shaking up the establishment, and the people were fun: hard-core workers and partyers, completely different from my high school friends. I embraced the theatrical lifestyle with enthusiasm.
Since my undergraduate days, my life has been one of pursuing a vocation as an educator, with theatre as the subject matter. To this day, I still see my work as a vocation, both as artist and as educator. As an artist, I want to do work which moves audiences, inspires them, makes them think about themselves and the world around them. I don’t always get a chance to do that, but it’s one reason I’ve concentrated on Shakespeare over my career, because I don’t think anyone writing in the English language has yet done those things better. As an educator, I am not so much interested in training actors for the business of theatre. Rather, I am interested in awakening as fully as possible the artistic sensibilities of my students, and trying to guide them on a path which will give them artistic as well as personal fulfillment. I would rather they become quality people and bring a deep sense of humanism to their lives and work more than anything else they might become.
These are some of the core experiences and influences which led me to go after a vocation as a theatre educator. Since time is now running short and my call for Forum lies in front of me, I think I’ll let this be the conclusion of Part II and take up some of the more year-to-year gritty details in the next installment. -twl
