Today, my book is published. This is the realization of a dream that I had given up on long ago. But my most overwhelming emotion today, and every time I look at the finished book, is sadness.

It would be wrong to say that I wrote Another Day’s Begun for any one person. Presumably like any other author, I wrote it for many people to read. But the person who I most wanted to read it, who I most wanted to have place it on her bookshelf, cannot. 

Catherine “Kaki” Marshall was a mentor to me in my days as a student at the University of Pennsylvania, and I am hardly her only protegee. Many kids at Penn, from the late 70s to the early 90s, would find their way to Kaki’s office, on the mezzanine level of the Annenberg Center, when she was the Associate Managing Director there, for knowledge, for caring. There was, quite literally, always an open door, unless you wanted to talk privately; I can’t recall her ever shutting anyone out for her own needs.

Having gone to Penn already in love with theatre, but convinced by many that it was no way to make a living or a life, I took stabs at other fields of interest, but none really resonated. I was most engaged with my time in the Annenberg Center, in my work study job in the box office, 20 hours each week, during my freshman and sophomore years. I joined the Penn Players, the school’s longest established drama troupe, and in two semesters, I directed two shows, staged managed one, and appeared in one. Kaki was the faculty adviser

Having met Kaki and grown friendly with her – mind you, she was a contemporary of my parents, with children of her own around my age – I was able to be assigned to her office for my work-study gig in my junior and senior years. To this day, I don’t remember doing any work beyond answering the phone. What I remember is sitting in Kaki’s office talking about theatre and constantly borrowing books from her wide, multi-tiered shelves – every book about theatre and nothing else. Because Penn had no theatre program, Kaki was my undergraduate theatre curriculum. 

I also recall one particular totem on those bygone shelves: a small, square fading color photo of Kaki and Hal Prince, in swim clothes, lounging on chaises at what Kaki told me was Hal’s vacation place in Spain. Hal was one my first theatre idols and, thanks to Kaki, I met him for the first time when I was a junior – and we sat together in Kaki’s office and talked. Kaki had done theatre at Penn with Hal when they were both students, and he remained her friend until he passed away.

In those last two years of college, when I was ostensibly working for her, we grew quite close, bonded by my overwhelming stress about school and career as well as by a personal tragedy in her family. We discussed these subjects openly, and she was for me – and again, I know for others – my theatre mom. She understood my concerns and worries and interests and desires and she supported them with knowledge and perspective. Her office was less my job and more my refuge. Kaki understood my love of theatre in a way my parents, always supportive but not personally invested in theatregoing or theatremaking, could not.

On the last day I saw Kaki on campus before graduating, I vividly remember telling her that I would always keep in touch. “Oh, Howard,” she said, “so many students say that. But with time and distance, it doesn’t often happen, and you need to know that I understand and it’s OK.”

Having introduced this essay talking about my sadness, this is where you might think I’ll now tell you about drifting away from Kaki and regretting the loss of our bond. But that wasn’t the case – I did realize what I had found in her, every minute, and was determined not to lose it.

I was faithful and would call every couple of months to share my news and hear hers. I would look for any pretext to visit Philadelphia, and always include a visit with Kaki, and with her husband Joe too, who I knew to have had a similarly influential effect on his students at Temple Law School.

Most every summer, I would spend a long weekend with Kaki and Joe at their beach home on the southern Jersey shore. We never ran out of things to talk about and, aside from politics and current events, which we discussed with vigor (from the same perspective), our main topic was theatre. Since Joe passed away several years ago, I tried to call Kaki every few weeks.

Our ongoing friendship was such that she always received a call from me on her birthday, year in and year out. She never asked for it, but I know she enjoyed it, proven by a call perhaps 10 years ago. I was in England in late September, as I usually am at that time, when my phone rang as it rarely did when people knew I was traveling. Kaki’s name showed on the screen.

Given to bouts of pessimism, I feared something was wrong. I answered by saying, “Kaki, hi, is everything OK?” With a laugh she replied, “Everything’s fine. But I wanted to know if everything is OK with you?” “I’m fine,” I responded. “I’m in England, remember? Why are you concerned?” “Because it’s my birthday,” she said, “and all of my kids have called now but I haven’t heard from you and I got worried.”

She also spoke to me every year on my birthday, though she didn’t know it. I always made a point of calling on that day because I certainly never expected her to keep track of the date, not with six children and more than a dozen grandchildren, plus siblings and nieces and nephews and cousins. Every year on these calls, I never pointed out my birthday, but we would mark that it was the birthday of Hal Prince. That date is two days from now.

We continued to go to the theatre together when possible, as we had when I was a student. I can’t recall which was when, but I believe our final two shows seated side by side were Tectonic Theatre Project’s two-part The Laramie Project and The Laramie Project: Ten Years Later, which we saw on a single marathon day, and Bill Irwin’s The Happiness Lecture.

For 36 years, I would call, I would send her things I wrote and we’d discuss them, and when face to face, we would laugh together and have the kind of earnest talks about theatre that I always craved. Because of this, because of the bookshelves in her Annenberg office where I learned so much, my greatest desire has been to know that Kaki had read my book and had it on her much-reduced home bookshelf, the bulk of her theatre books having been given away years earlier.

Kaki died in August of 2020, not from the virus, but simply in the course that a life runs, and she was not ill very long. She was one month shy of her 95^th birthday. It was only weeks from the time she went to the hospital until she died. We had spoken perhaps two weeks before things had started heading in the direction I had feared for some time. I feared it because my parents had both passed years earlier, leaving Kaki as my only true surrogate parent. 

Earlier this past summer, I had thought that perhaps I should let Kaki read the manuscript of Another Day’s Begun, not because there seemed to be any imminent concern, but just in case anything happened. She was 94, after all. I decided against it, putting faith in the fact that all of the women in her family were long-lived, quite remarkably so. I wanted her to see a complete finished book, not simply as something on its way to being a book. It was a miscalculation I will always regret.

Countless people have influenced my life, more than I could ever thank in the book or face to face. But I most wanted Kaki to read Another Day’s Begun because she was the one person I could truly credit for fanning the flame of my theatre love and knowledge at the earliest stage. Also, while she had seen shows at theatres where I worked, this book is something that is truly mine, a testament to her support, her help, her faith in me, her love – and her understanding of me.

I cannot share this with Kaki in recognition of all she gave to me. But in her honor, her memory, and with the deep love I felt and feel for Kaki, I share it today with all of you, because she would have been very happy for us all to have a new theatre book for our shelves. And if a student spots a copy on your shelf and expresses interest, please loan it to them, because in that moment, you will do for that student what Kaki did for me, and that act honors our friendship.

On November 4, composer Jeanine Tesori was the keynote speaker at the fourth annual “Stage The Change: Theatre as a Social Voice” event, co-sponsored by the Tilles Center at Long Island University and the Happauge Public Schools. Below are some selections from Tesori’s talk and demonstration, inevitably with the musical sections removed, and with sections condensed and edited for clarity. This represents only a portion her presentation to well over 500 area high school students. What was most striking was how much she spoke not about what she has done and achieved, but how the students in attendance can approach their lives, what they can do, and what they can achieve.

*   *   *

There is no difference between the world and what we bring onto the stage. Therefore, if you are in theatre, if you are in the arts, you are a citizen of the world. Your job is to reveal the thing. You are agents, and not so secret, about what the message is.

We are more alike than we are unalike. On a cellular level, if you look at the earth as a giant cell, it always wants to divide – always, always, always. That’s how cells get to be two cells – you learned it in biology, mitosis. It pulls apart and it divides. The world is going to want you to divide, however you divide it up, that is what it’s going to want you to do. Your job as a citizen, as an artist, as a filmmaker, as playmaker, as an activist, as an actor, is to unite. Press against the thing that divides us.

You are here as artists to ask how, why, when, where. Your job is about how you listen to something and find out the why. We are storytellers.

We wait to spend time with people so that they can bring their authentic self to the stage. What are the stories that we tell about other people before we wait for them to sing, or speak? What are the stories that other people think about us based on a silhouette – large, tall, small, a color, green, blue white. Immigrant, emigrant. What are the stories that we’re telling each other?

Let’s challenge ourselves as storytellers to be authentic about the stories we’re telling, the stories that we’re telling ourselves about other people. That’s one lesson about how we learn. Part of the learning is to confront a part of ourselves that we’re not so proud of. That’s the way through it.

How do we divide, how do we unite? How do we listen, how do we learn? There’s a way that we can unite, and the way is often really surprising.

*   *   *

Theatre will never die because stories will never die. You can have film – and I love film, film is amazing – but it does not require your presence in order to be. Theatre requires participation.

*   *   *

Poems for me aren’t lyrics. There’s a difference between a poem and a lyric. I think it’s because a poem exists on its own, it doesn’t need anything. A lyric is helped by music.

*   *   *

When I get a script, I try to understand why do I have to write it. Those things we were talking about are the questions I ask myself. Why do I want to spend five years? It’s why it’s really good to look at your life, be the author and the authority in your life, because you’re writing it. You self-assign everything that you do, you do for yourself in the way that your teachers [do], you end up teaching yourself. That’s what’s going to end up happening. That started happening with me. I started diagnosing things and asking myself first, why should I write it, what’s in me to write it, and why should I spend five years of my life on it?

Time is the only thing we run out of, and I’m really aware of it now, just because of my age I’m super-aware of it. So I want to be aware when I look at a story and I think, why am I writing it, why should I write it, what do I have to give to it? What is the metaphor?

The metaphor is the thing that makes us more alike than different. It’s what I call the mom clause – it’s why my mom would care. When I write a show I hope my mom will come and be moved by it. Why would she find it funny? My mom is not in theatre, she doesn’t understand, she still asks me what I’m directing. That’s what I really use. I use that idea of why would a really large group of people, why would they want to come see this?

That’s what I would ask you to ask yourselves: what is interesting about this article, what does this article make me feel, what do I have to say about this article that reveals who I am, because you know what? You are unlike anyone else. I know that sounds so ‘poster in a ninth grade classroom’ but it’s really true. No one else is going to write that piece like you’re going to write it. You’re going to write it in a certain way. So that’s really the question: what do I think? What makes me me? I know that all of this sounds so cornball.

Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead, look up some of his quotes, he had the most amazing quotes. He said don’t be the best, be the only person who does what you do. So it’s not about competing or comparing what you’re doing to that other person. It’s about taking what it is, that whoever you believe in, the divine spark I call it, you can call it something, bring it all to that essay, to everything that you do. The answers will be surprising then.

Make it yours, that’s the first thing. The second thing is: write bad ideas down. Don’t not write the bad ideas. The bad ideas are the gateway drug to the good idea.

Photos of Jeanine Tesori © Howard Sherman

O-ho the Wells Fargo Wagon is-a comin’ down the street, and apparently it’s not interested in doing business with kids who aspire to the arts, their parents, their teachers, or arts organizations.

In promotional materials for their Teen Day on September 17 (because after all what kid doesn’t wasn’t to take time on a weekend to spend time at the bank), Wells Fargo has mounted a campaign that seems overtly dismissive of careers in the arts. While both they and I acknowledge that young people’s career interests may evolve over time, it seems strange that “yesterday’s” careers are ballerina and actor, while today’s careers are engineer and botanist. Clearly Wells Fargo is at least sufficiently self-aware not to have proposed banker as a present or future option.

On one flyer for Teen Day, Wells Fargo appear to compound their disdain by opining, “Your teen may not know what they want to be, but they know it will be something special.” Are careers in the arts, already left behind by the bank, not special? I know lots of actors, and I can say that the vast majority of them are pretty darn special. I suspect the same holds true for ballerinas.

By showing arts professions as professions which are to be put into the past, Wells Fargo has weirdly chosen to echo Old Navy’s misguided toddler onsie option from late 2015, where they changed the word “artist” in the phrase “young aspiring artist” to, giving buyers a choice, “astronaut” or “president.” That bit of salesmanship worked so well that Old Navy pulled the shirts within days and apologized for the offense.

So what to make of Wells Fargo leaving arts careers in the dust? It could mean that they’re not particularly interested in having a piece of the arts impact on the economy nationally, because surely even a portion of the annual “$135.2 billion of economic activity—$61.1 billion by the nation’s nonprofit arts and culture organizations in addition to $74.1 billion in event-related expenditures by their audiences,” according to Americans for the Arts, is small potatoes to the big shots at Wells Fargo. Wells Fargo is implying that it also is willing to leave on the table, once again citing Americans for the Arts, the “this economic activity supports 4.13 million full-time jobs and generates $86.68 billion in resident household income.”

Needless to say, I seriously doubt there are any banks that are uninterested in any legitimate segments of the market, since here in New York City there appear to be competing branches of major financial institutions on every street corner, hoping passersby will ultimately park their money there. So why make arts careers the example of what must be abandoned on the way to maturity? After all, before becoming an arts administrator, I once dreamed of being a “cowboy doctor,” giving that exotic pursuit up for the more mundane, steady world of entertainment.

While it is, admittedly, a holiday weekend, I wrote to multiple communications executives at Wells Fargo seeking comment on their campaign. As I post, I’ve not heard back from Oscar Suris, EVP of Corporate Communications; Arati Randolph at Corporate News, Enterprise Content, Executive Communications and New Media; Mark Folk, Head of Corporate Media Relations Corporate and Financial; Holly Rockwood, Marketing/Advertising (though an auto-reply message indicated she would not be checking e-mail); or New York state PR representative AnnMarie McDonald.

Should I hear from them, or if this should reach them through other means, I would like to point out that while careers in the arts take great commitment and often great sacrifice, young people aspiring to that work would in fact benefit from early financial education. Instead of shunting them aside for the engineers and botanists, especially in major urban markets, Wells Fargo might do well to market directly to them.

Even though Wells Fargo was immortalized in song in the Broadway musical The Music Man, an honor I can’t recall being bestowed on Citibank or TD Bank by any musical, it fails to recognize that its glib marketing is rapidly spreading on social media and alienating an entire market segment that actually cares about musicals, ballets, and the like. At the same time, it’s unlikely anyone is looking at their Teen Day promotions and saying, “Oh, good, Wells Fargo isn’t letting children entertain thoughts about arts careers. Kids, save time on September 17 for a field trip. That’s the bank we want”

While the bank’s Wild West heritage is now only a stagecoach image in their marketing, it’s one that over the past 24 hours, has lost its allure for countless friends, business associates and members of the arts community at large. Even were I to spot an actual vintage wagon comin’ down the street, I wouldn’t give it a second look. After all, I was a teen who dreamed of working in the arts and, four decades later, I still am. So after this dismissive, condescending campaign, I’m quite certain that the Wells Fargo wagon has absolutely nothing special just for me.

P.S. By the way, less than two weeks ago, Wells Fargo was fined $3.5 million dollars for misleading practices in connection with student loans. Should they be dispensing any advice about financial management to teens right now at all?

Update, September 3, 5 pm: Shortly after this post went live, I received an e-mail from Christina Kolbjornsen, SVP, Head of Marketing Communications in Wells Fargo’s Corporate Communications, responding to my prior inquiries and asking whether we should communicate via e-mail or voice. Because I was scheduled to conduct an interview on a separate subject, I sent Ms. Kolbjornsen a series of questions about the Teen Day campaign and the response to it, and received the following reply:

Wells Fargo is deeply committed to the arts, and we offer our sincere apology for the initial ads promoting our September 17 Teen Financial Education Day. They were intended to celebrate all the aspirations of young people and fell short of that goal. We are making changes to the campaign’s creative that better reflect our company’s core value of embracing diversity and inclusion, and our support of the arts. Last year, Wells Fargo’s support of the arts, culture and education totaled $93 million.