This is a Challenge

For years, I’ve ridden the wave- not of career really, but employment. Since exiting college nearly thirty years ago, one thing remianed constant until about five years ago.

Employment. Right out of college it was simple. One interview, one week of waiting, and appointment to a position at Phillips Andover. In my own dreams, I couldn’t imagine such a thing happening. For a then actor, newly affianced, the choice made perfect sense. And along with the job came a new passion. Teaching theater and training actors.

I still don’t entirely understand the nature of it- and I won’t try to understand. But I know what the “it” is. Watching the telly last weekend, I saw a competition between college receivers. All had made it this far- to the showcase for catchers of footballs soon to be playing the game on Sundays. In each case, their skills were amazing. Balls blazed at them thrown by Jugs machines. Through the first four receivers, each dropped their fair share, but still, catching the ball the way they did was nothing short of remarkable. Until the guy from Penn State checked in.

He dismantled the competition. Standing there with hands by his side and seemingly oblivious to the pressure of the moment, he picked balls out of the sky as if they had been thrown by three-year-olds. Each ball thrown nestled into his hands and was tossed away like a bad apple. Not thrown away, or dropped after a catch, but tossed away lightly as he turned to the next machine. Eight for eight each time.

At that instant, I knew that he would be employed the next year by some NFL team in search of a wide receiver that needed a third down “possession” type of receiver. he showed no blazing speed, or dominating toughness, just an uncanny ability to pluck footballs from the air. I felt at one with him.

Except in the employment part. Thing is, there is no possible way to explain what it is that I do in a classroom. Time after time, I have asked actors a simple question- how do you act so well? They’ll never give you an answer, because they can’t. Moreover, they will readily acknowledge the impossibility of such a thing. You can’t explain a sub-conscious process. Something happens- you made it happen, but the “something” is elusive.

That’s the way teaching is for me- when I do it best, I am trying to get out of the way of myself and of the actors I teach. My own conscious awakening of my sub-conscious is the point I work toward, then I avoid the things that would bring me back into the conscious state. Ideas come flying out of my subconscious with ease- they are then monitored by my conscious self, chosen for delivery or tossed away like those bad apples.

So that’s my gift, the thing that makes me employable. The gift I have, when carefully considered, brings people to the theater. Unfortunately though, you can’t explain that magic “if” to just anybody. I’ve no idea how many theater educators are out their plying their craft successfully, but in my experience, the vast majority of those teachers have colleagues and students who will maintain that they are the greatest thing since sliced bread.

Those who do the hiring then are concerned with different things. How old is the person? Can they do other things well? Are they the perfect “fit” for our school? Perfectly reasonable questions to ask. My first two schools were fits. The third was, and then it wasn’t. The fourth? Let’s just say I was in that one to keep my family fed.

So, just past fifty years old, I am searching for the school that will open its doors to what it is that I do. The age doesn’t help, the handicapped feet don’t help, the master’s degree never pursued because I was so enmeshed in teaching doesn’t help. All that can really help is my ability to describe the indescribable to someone, somewhere, and hope that they get “it”.

Until then, I am learning a different lesson. That one brings me back to the Great Depression, and emboldens me with the knowledge that fighting for survival in hard times is perhaps the best lesson of all.

First show at the school that brings me in?

Grapes of Wrath.

That I understand.