This past Friday evening, I attended the Waterbury CT Arts Magnet High School’s production of August Wilson’s Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, a production that had been debated, then delayed, and about which I had been fairly vocal in my advocacy. The students acquitted themselves quite admirably, but the real discovery came during the post-performance discussion, which included the entire cast, as well as the actors Eisa Davis and Frankie Faison.

The most revelatory comment of the evening did not pertain to the “n-word” controversy that had threatened to shutter the show. Instead, what made me really sit up and think was a comment from one of the students, in response to a general question about how working on the play affected them.

“We don’t get material like this every day,” said the young man (whose name I didn’t catch because I was busy relaying the discussion via Twitter). “We’re the MTV generation. We’re bombarded by trash.”

I do not know anything about this young student actor, but this was certainly the first time I had heard an inner-city high school student, albeit one at an arts magnet school, make a statement that heretofore had emanated mostly from the mouths and pens of pundits (amateur and professional) older than I am. And in those few words, the universal value of this production was conveyed, moving beyond the focus on a single word that is heard only in passing in the play’s dialogue.

As someone whose high school theatre experience ran to Don’t Drink the Water and Bye Bye Birdie, I never had the chance to explore a difficult work. As a once-aspiring actor, I was never challenged to “up my game” on the stage, by taking on a difficult challenger like Wilson or Miller. We read Albee in English class, although shorn of any context that would have truly revealed The Zoo Story to us, but when it came to putting on a show, the material catered to whatever youthful skills we may have had, rather than advancing them.

How many high schools not only allow, but push their kids to grapple with great works? Yes, we can make jokes about a 17-year-old Willy or Linda Loman, and it’s highly unlikely that the performers will ever reach the true core of these characters. But by playing against someone greater than themselves, they discover the challenge that is acting, even if the auditorium is not as full as it might have been had Cats been on offer.

As for the trash that bombards kids? We are all bombarded by it. As I write, much of America is focused on dresses from the Oscars or watching the sad spectacle of Charlie Sheen’s self-immolation. If this is what is served up for adult consumption as morning news, I truly cannot imagine the messages and media consumed by high schoolers, middle schoolers, even elementary school kids today. And while most thoughtful people perpetually decry the dumbing down of cultural conversation, the debasement of entertainment, we do our youths no favor if we simplify their education, be it in the name of in loco parentis, ticket sales or budgets.

What I was pleased to hear on Friday evening is that there are kids who realize the potential effects of what schools and society at large offers them, and they hunger for more. We underestimate the capacity and the appetites of younger minds at their own peril, since not every student goes to an arts high school, not every student is drawn to work by artists like August Wilson (let alone forced to defend its place on school stages in front of a board of education).

I do not advocate this type of work because of its potentially problematic language or content, but because of its larger ideas which belong in the classroom, at our dinner tables, and in our daily lives. We cannot allow the simplistic, sound-bite, lowest common denominator offerings that pass for entertainment become the standard, lestIdiocracy become first prescient, then prevalent. Let’s keep firing metaphoric fastballs at students and let them struggle to hit them back, because it is in that struggle in which they learn the most.

A final word. During Friday night’s post-show discussion, an older woman stood up and identified herself as someone who had attended the school board meeting at which the fate of Joe Turner was decided, and confessed that she had been opposed to the production but that after seeing the show, she felt differently. “I’m 72 years old,” she said, “And you have taught me – to trust high school students.” And to learn from them. I know I did.

* * *

Having shared two notes that I tweeted out during Friday evening’s discussion, let me take this opportunity to recount what little I managed to set down for those who follow me on Twitter, typing quickly with my thumbs even as I paid attention to the worthy colloquy. They are unedited, but in chronological order. I hope they speak for themselves.

• Frankie Faison to Joe Turner cast: “This is not easy stuff to do.”
• Frankie Faison: “Even before you did this play, you’d found your song. You went to the Board of Ed so you could do this play.”
• Joe Turner cast member: “We don’t get material like this every day. We’re the MTV generation. We’re bombarded by trash.”
• Eisa Davis: “Don’t let this play be your only experience with this work. Let August Wilson lead you to your history.”
• Eisa Davis: “Learn your history. Yes, it had slavery. But August Wilson showed us laughter and love that rose from that.”
• Audience member: “I was worried about use of the n-word. I’m 72 years old and you have taught me – to trust high school students.”
• Eisa Davis: “I don’t use the n-word. But I am a playwright and I created a character who had to use it.”
• Cast member: “7 year old kids don’t know where this word came from. They hear their older brothers using it. They think it came from Tupac.”
• Frankie Faison: “This is not a play about using this word one time or 50 times. We do this play a disservice if we make it about this word.”
• Frankie Faison: “Let’s not walk away carrying this word. Let us carry the work done on this stage tonight.”

January 19, 2011

Waterbury Board of Education
236 Grand Street
Waterbury CT 06702

To the members of the Waterbury Board of Education:

Stephen Sondheim, a singular voice in the American theatre, famously wrote the lyric, “Art isn’t easy.” I am reminded of this as I read of the current debate within the Waterbury school system over the Arts Magnet School’s proposed production of Joe Turner’s Come and Gone by August Wilson, another singular voice in theatre.

It is not my intention to offer a blanket defense of “the n-word,” any more than I would defend epithets against Latinos, Asian Americans, Christians, Jews, Muslims or any ethnic or religious group. But what I do defend are the words so carefully chosen by August Wilson, one of the great playwrights America has ever produced, and unquestionably the finest African-American playwright in our country’s history.

August, who I had the honor to know, was a man who knew all too well the scars of racism, faced both personally and by his ancestors. But he transformed those experiences into truthful, transcendent art. If he felt the need to use the offensive word, he did so knowingly and with careful intent, not to glamorize it, but to represent its place in the racial discourse of the 20th century. August’s 10-play cycle of African-American life stands as a remarkable artistic coup and history lesson about the challenges of black life decade by decade, a monumental work completed in his final days.

I understand that schools must not promote or endorse hateful speech, but at an arts high school, within a proper context and with the proper preparation, arts students and their families should have the opportunity to explore and grapple with August’s words – all of them – so that they may struggle with the literature and the sad truths that underlie it. We do not live in a world of absolutes; to make absolute decisions about the utterance of words in a proper education context denies students their ability to learn and grow.

I am product of theatre in Connecticut, although I did not study it. But born in New Haven and later raised in Orange, I have worked at the Westport Country Playhouse, Hartford Stage, Goodspeed Opera House, O’Neill Theatre Center and even the long defunct Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford. Theatre in Connecticut gave me many opportunities, which is why I feel so close to this issue.

I saw August’s earliest works bloom in Connecticut and I believe were he still with us, he would be writing to support the teachers and students of the Arts Magnet School. Because he cannot, I feel I must use the platform that I have as head of the organization that created The Tony Awards, theatre’s highest honor, to stand in his defense and to express my sincere hope that his words will indeed be heard on the Magnet School’s stage, for the benefit of those who perform them and those who hear them.

I am attaching to this letter a blog entry I wrote earlier this week on this topic, which expands upon my thoughts on this matter. I hope that this letter may be shared with the Board before any decision and I thank you for your consideration.

Sincerely,
Howard Sherman
Executive Director

I found myself particularly upset last week when I first read that David Snead, superintendant of schools in Waterbury CT, was planning to shut down an Arts Magnet School’s production of August Wilson’s play Joe Turner’s Come and Gone because it contained a hateful racial epithet, one sufficiently incendiary that all reportage on the matter substituted the phrase “the n-word” in its place.

I was certainly not thinking about defending the word itself. Nor can I, a Caucasian-American, begin to know the full effect of the word on students, on any African-American, or indeed upon anyone hearing it. Scholars of all racial heritages have argued for and against the word in common usage, in music, in literature of any period. I can only say that several years ago, when a job applicant inexplicably told me an anecdote in which he used the word, placing it in the mouth of someone he spoke about, I became so enraged that I immediately stopped the speaker, ended the interview and told him that anyone stupid enough to tell a story containing that word had no place working for me, and, furious, I asked him to leave.

Mr. Snead is on record saying that use of the word in any context should not be allowed in the Waterbury school system and indeed, in everyday discourse, I would agree with him. The Wilson estate has rightly refused to allow any alteration to the text. But I think context is the central issue here, and Mr. Snead’s solution may sacrifice context in the interest of an absolute, though I do not envy nor demonize him for his concern.

Although I know nothing of the Waterbury Arts Magnet School, I must assume that its teachers and principal are individuals who seek to foster the creativity and talents of their students; I applaud them for that without knowing them or the specifics at all. In a city school, I also imagine that they must have difficulty finding material for their students to perform which is meaningful both artistically and personally to the students, especially if the number of African-American and Latino students mirrors that of most city schools. Consequently, the decision to stage a work by August Wilson, whose plays featured almost exclusively African-American characters, is not just pedagogically logical, it is logistically necessary so that students aren’t forced into playing “white” roles, which account for the preponderance of characters in great American dramatic literature.

That this confrontation comes just as debate was boiling over the removal of the same word from a new edition of Huckleberry Finn is coincidence on many levels, but insightful. Samuel Clemens, aka Mark Twain, was a white man whose famous book used the epithet repeatedly, yet he supposedly used it to show the ignorance of those who would use it – a tricky balancing act. In The New York Times, author Lorrie Moore suggested that epithet or no, Twain’s racial portrayal of the slave named Jim was sufficiently ambiguous that despite the book’s literary value, it did not belong in high schools. That may well be.

But August Wilson is not Mark Twain. Wilson was black, Twain white. Both are dead, but Twain for many years, while Wilson died, too young, less than a decade ago. Twain, while a uniquely American voice, was part of a long tradition of literature for his race, while August was, and remains, the most acclaimed and most produced African-American playwright in history. That they both spent creatively fecund years in Connecticut is one point of commonality, perhaps coincidental.

I suppose what upset me so as the Joe Turner debate hit the papers was how sad I was that in Connecticut, where I grew up and spent much of my career, where Wilson’s earliest plays, including Turner, were developed (at The Eugene O’Neill Theatre Center) and premiered (at the Yale Repertory Theatre), African-American students may well be denied the right to perform his words. Though I knew him only casually, August was dedicated to building a body of literature about the African-American experience, and indeed to creating rich and varied roles for black actors to play. He was also one of the stage’s great poets, and he chose each and every word with exquisite care and wrote arias for actors borne of his experience and the experience of his ancestors, experiences in which, unfortunately, “the n-word” was part of the conversation, whether we like it or not. If he chose to deploy it, he knew exactly what he was doing, and it was not to sustain the word’s usage but to place it in its historical context.

Is Joe Turner an appropriate play for a high school to perform? It’s certainly a difficult piece, but to use a sports metaphor, you improve your game by playing someone stronger than you are. So the Waterbury teachers, and their supportive principal, chose well. Can 16 and 17 year olds understand everything Wilson hoped to say, be they in the audience or on the stage? Perhaps not, but at 17 did I fully understand the racism on display in 12 Angry Men? Again, probably not. Should schools sanitize drama programs of all “difficult” content? While in Waterbury they now talk of a new approvals process before productions are underway, I hope that teachers and principals, especially at schools where there is already special sensitivity to and understanding of artistic work, will be given the freedom to select work that is both educationally and socially appropriate.

So as I write in the early hours of the celebration of Dr Martin Luther King’s birthday, and 36 hours or so before the Waterbury School Board meets, I must say that it is my deepest hope that August Wilson’s words will be allowed to be heard within the Waterbury school system and that students, on stage and off, will have the opportunity and indeed the necessity of struggling with all of his words, those that hurt as well as those that heal. Great art is not always pretty, or easy, or even correct. But if students are denied the work of August Wilson, it is not just bowdlerizing the words of a work in the public domain, available in countless other editions (like Twain). They may be denied an opportunity to embody the history, literature and artistry that August Wilson brought to the stage, and cordoning off the world of one of America’s greatest theatrical voices from those most eager to explore it and those who would undoubtedly benefit from it. That this could happen only a few miles from where Wilson’s work was first heard by theatergoers before going on to national and international fame would be an added insult.

This post originally appeared on the American Theatre Wing website.

Before I am beset by rampaging hordes of “gleeks” incensed by the title of this entry, let me state for the record that I am in fact a fan of the television series Glee. I have seen every episode to date, save one (due to an unfortunate DVR mishap). While I don’t place it in my TV pantheon along with The Sopranos (1st season only),Hill Street Blues (yes, I’m old), the first ten years or so of The Simpsons, and the glorious Slings and Arrows (if you’ve never seen it, you must), I enjoy and applaud Glee for its championing of artistic expression, of the importance of pursuing what you love even when others would belittle you for that love. Frankly, even if the series were little more than musical numbers interspersed with the inspiring and heart-breaking scenes between Chris Colfer and Mike O’Malley, I would enthusiastically endorse it.

But as with members of our family, we can care for them and still have issues with them. So it is with me and Glee.

Glee disappoints me because I feel that it stints in one area. I am willing to admit that perhaps I am setting the bar too high, or asking something which is beyond the range that the show’s creators wish to tackle, and I am a strong advocate for judging the work of creative artists based on their parameters, not my own. I should also share with you that when I once ventured to discuss this issue with the arts editors at a major U.S. daily newspaper, I received the verbal equivalent of a “slushie attack,” the form of ridicule so thoughtfully re-popularized by Glee‘s writers and producers.

So now that I’ve built it up, let me simply state my problem: when do these kids actually rehearse?

Think about it. We see the students in the show choir rehearsal room on every episode, where they discuss song choice – but then they either break right into that song, fully arranged (with musicians who magically and disappear as necessary) and note perfect (except when dramatic effect requires something less than perfection and they turn off the auto-tuner), or they are whisked into a flight of fantasy in which they are costumed, made-up, choreographed, coiffed, lit, and edited within an inch of their life in settings that even Sue Sylvester’s cheering budget couldn’t afford. The vague bows in the direction of rehearsal always seem to take place in someone’s bedroom, involving both lip-syncing and lip-locking in most every instance, or if they’re actually on a stage, the rehearsal usually ends suddenly due to someone’s personal crisis.

Obviously you could look at this in many ways. The show is, like all scripted television (and in fact most “reality” television), a gloss on life and why should we expect fidelity to accuracy? Or perhaps Glee is something more than that, a descendent of Dennis Potter’s Pennies from Heaven and The Singing Detective, in which every musical moment is a fantasy counterpoint to the harsh realities of life? Maybe the entire show is an obscure metaphor, and in its final episode we will discover everything took place in the mind of an autistic child?

All that aside, Glee is squandering what could be its most valuable and longest lasting asset. Let’s face it, in less than a season and half Glee has become America’s leading public advocate for arts education in our schools. It weekly champions the glory and beauty of musical performance, and packages it in a manner which is drawing audiences presumably beyond just the high school students it portrays. It is wise enough to show teachers who get carried away by sublimating their own ambitions through the achievements of their students, but doesn’t have the courage to show that performance is actually hard work, not an endless series of divine musical inspirations that have singers knocking everything out of the park at the very first mention.

The football team and cheerleaders practice, and are coached. But when did Mr. Schuester last say, “Let’s take it again from the bridge,” or “Someone was flat in there. Was it you, Rachel?” As a former high school chorus member (though the show choir concept was alien to me when the series began, and thank god I never encountered it, as I can sing but not even “move” well), I recall being drilled over and over in material we were to perform, working from something quaintly known as “sheet music,” which you can now download illegally from the internet (but that’s another blog entirely, already written by Jason Robert Brown).

Accepting the fictional construct behind the show, I can liken Glee most closely to sports movies, like The Rookie and even Major League, in which an underdog or group of misfits fight their way from the very bottom to the very top. But part of what makes those films so emotionally stirring is that we see how hard the athletes have to work to achieve their goal and as we watch them do so, we become part of their struggle to defeat the odds and triumph when no one had any belief that they could ever do so. Would Rocky have been half so effective had we not seen Stallone punching sides of beef, drinking raw eggs and running up the steps of the Philadelphia Art Museum?

Young people (and their parents, who can effect arts funding) would surely benefit from the occasional scene of rehearsal struggles, which show the rigor of true performance, show that kids need the arts and the arts need support, that we don’t just open our throats and sound like Barbra, but have to work at it. And even for those tens of thousands who will never achieve the perfection put forth by Glee and the recording stars who both the characters and their viewers idolize, isn’t it important that we see the efforts to achieve if indeed show choir is a competitive event, and that even those who don’t make the cut, or don’t pursue it professionally, will make the audiences – and understanding parents – of tomorrow? One does not magically become great, let alone a star, without work and sacrifice.

Glee has ratings and buzz, which in the world of television, means that Glee has power. But as Peter Parker’s Uncle Ben taught us, with great power, comes great responsibility. Do you hear me Ryan Murphy? You’ve done a lot, but there’s more to be done. The great work begins.

1. Who is the guy with the beard at the piano, and why is his presence never really acknowledged? Is he Matt Groening? Is he invisible?
2. Who is running the drama club at this school, and aren’t they awfully upset, especially over a Rocky Horror production that was to come to full fruition in only two weeks, without any consultation?
3. Is Heather Morris playing a barely disguised version of herself, or is she actually giving, through underplaying, the most brilliant performance on television today?
4. Is Show Choir a class or an extracurricular activity, and does anyone at this school ever learn “The Hallelujah Chorus”?
5. Is Kristin Chenoweth playing “the Dennis Hopper role” on Glee (from Hoosiers, people, not Speed)?

This post originally appeared on the American Theatre Wing website.

My friend Cassandra Kubinski stopped by the Wing office the other day. I was very surprised to find, as we chatted, that I hadn’t seen her in well over a year. It turns out she’d spent much of that time living in Nashville pursuing her singing and songwriting career, opening a music venue there with a friend for a short time. Cassie and I aren’t close friends, but I’m very fond of her. She has been very good about staying in touch overall, so this gap was anomalous. We first met about 13 years ago when she was in two productions at Goodspeed Musicals, while I was general manager there. I calculate that Cassie is about 27 or so now. Do the math. Or let me help you: she played the title role in Annie.

* * *

Theatre is a transitory field, albeit less so for those of us in administration, or on a resident theatre’s permanent staff. But for actors, directors, designers, authors and so many others, theatre is, among many other things, a constant go-round of meeting, bonding, working together, then breaking apart, only to start all over again with yet another group. As a result, friendships can operate somewhat differently than what you might be used to. Because everyone is constantly moving on to another project, it’s hardly unusual to go for a long period of time without seeing someone you consider a friend, then picking up right where you left off. One benefit of the proliferation of cell phones, e-mail, Facebook, Twitter and the like is that they actually allow theatre folk to stay in touch much more easily than when I entered the field. If you really want to find someone, you don’t end up in endless phone tag with a home answering machine, or, to date myself, their service.

At the same time, I have found theatre to be remarkably constant, perhaps because I spent much of my career in institutional theatre, which affords more continuity. The people I met when I worked at Hartford Stage are still an important part of my life, and rarely a day goes by one when I’m not in communication with at least one person who I know from my tenure there. But as a result, we have grown up together, aged together, shared losses and successes together.

Yet on some level, I will always be the impetuous, abrasive boy press agent. Pete Gurney will always be my adoptive W.A.S.P. uncle, who was so proud of me when I got the job at the Wing, and told me so; Richard Thomas will always be my energetic, mischievous older theatre brother who egged me on to my first (and only) shot of tequila; Kate Burton remains my warm-hearted, “everybody’s favorite” older sister, who once laced into me for not sharing a secret with her; David Hawkanson and Mark Lamos will always be my thrilling, aggravating, wisdom-imparting older cousins who teased me, taunted me, and taught me the ways of the world.

Because these relationships remained in place, and still do, for more than half my life, for a long time I never had any sense of growing up. Just as with my blood relatives, or with my high school friends, the interactions between me and members of my theatre family revert to old patterns the moment I see them – often shocking outsiders when I lapse into the casual profanity that was the lingua franca of Hartford Stage in the mid-80s.

So it is only recently that I have begun to understand that I may now be the uncle, the cousin, to young people who entered my circle at one point or another during my career. As Cassie sat in my office, I looked at this extraordinarily self-possessed, determined young woman (which she has been since I first met her) and felt proud of her as she talked of her career, her changing perspectives, and her achievements. I sensed there were some disappointments along the way too, but hey, who tells their uncle or older cousin about those?

I realize there is a younger generation to my theatrical family, and though I cannot claim to have mentored them in the ways that Hawkanson and Lamos, and Michael Price of Goodspeed (another uncle), mentored me, I am extraordinarily happy each time I see them, and so thrilled with their successes. Howard Fishman, once a high school intern at Hartford Stage, is a successful recording artist with numerous albums and a flourishing concert and club performing career; Kate MacCluggage, who would answer phones on weekends at The O’Neill Center and is now the leading lady of The 39 Steps here in New York; John Barlow, once an intern at the American Shakespeare Theatre in CT, who used to do errands for me in NYC while I remained in CT, established one of Broadway’s top p.r. firms, and now contemplates his next career move; Lex Leifheit, who did p.r. at The O’Neill Center, now runs SOMArts in San Francisco; Chris Jahnke, who came to Goodspeed fresh out of college, is now a top-flight orchestrator and music director.

Though their successes and increasing authority are reminders that I am indeed aging, since they are all now adults and have become my peers, I harbor great pride in their achievements. Just as Kate Burton is fond of saying about her and me, “The kids have grown up, and are in charge.”

A week or so ago, I noticed that I was being followed on Twitter by a young man named Christopher Kauffmann. With a few quick clicks, I determined that he was the same Chris who, along with his younger sister, had appeared at Goodspeed in Finian’s Rainbow. I didn’t know him as well as I knew Cassie, and I haven’t seen him once in the ensuing years. He’s living in New York, acting. We’re going to meet for coffee soon. And I’m going to be very proud of him, too.

* * *

A final thought: there a countless young people who I’ve encountered over the years, and regret that I don’t know better. Every year at the Wing, some three dozen kids spend two weeks in our SpringboardNYC program, while several hundred participate in our Theatre Intern Group. I wish I had more time to mentor them, to become their theatre family, and I feel the same way about the six classes of the National Theatre Institute that were at The O’Neill during my tenure (one kid I remember a bit from those years, because he was so tall, was named John Krasinski, and he’s done pretty well with no help from me). Someday, I hope we all meet again, as peers.

This post originally appeared on the American Theatre Wing website

As I write this on in the late afternoon of September 11, 2010, I am sitting on lower Sixth Avenue in New York City. Had I been sitting here nine years and one day ago, I assume I would have had a view of the upper floors of the World Trade Center towers. I would not have been sitting here nine years ago, because the towers would have already fallen that morning, and lower Manhattan was simply nowhere to be.

Nine years ago today, I was about 125 miles east northeast of Manhattan, on the grounds of the Eugene O’Neill Theatre Center, where I was just about a year into my tenure as Executive Director. The O’Neill, for those who’ve never had the opportunity to work or visit there, is a bucolic spot on the Connecticut shoreline at the junction of Long Island Sound and the Thames River, quite close to all major amenities, but (at least then) still blessedly a seemingly isolated retreat. It was, supposedly, on that very plot of land that Josie Hogan attempted to soothe and perhaps save the tortured James Tyrone, Jr.

When news of the first plane striking a tower reached us, shortly after 9 am, it was not because we had a TV on. In fact, there wasn’t a working TV in the building. One of the staff either had read it on the internet or heard it on the radio; I don’t really recall. All that got to me was that a plane had hit one of the towers. I assumed it was an unfortunate accident and went about business as usual. When the news emerged about the second plane strike, it was clear that this was no accident. I have no memory of when I learned about the crash of the plane that we ultimately learned had been Pentagon bound.

When the towers fell, we received the news, as if in some earlier age, only via radio. It was for me, and I mean this in the literal sense, incomprehensible. I truly couldn’t imagine the towers burning and collapsing. I had no visuals to provide me with proof.

By this point, of course, staff was glued to the radio and it was quite apparent that no work would be done that day. Reports began to come in of school closings, of business closings, of the State of Connecticut closing all offices.

Since I didn’t need to gather the staff, who were huddled around the best radio, I then made a snap decision. I told them that unless they had children who were being released from school which they had to attend to, we were not closing, like seemingly everyplace else. Radios would be turned off, discussion of the tragedy needed to stop, and we would face the day as normally as possible. We needed to do this, I said, because of the kids. The kids had nowhere to go, and what message would we send if we fled the campus while they stayed, but for a skeletal staff?

‘The kids’ to which I referred were the students of The O’Neill’s National Theatre Institute (NTI), a semester long-theatre intensive which drew some thirty students from colleges around the country to live and learn on The O’Neill campus. The kids had arrived for the semester but two days earlier, and here they were in new territory, with peers and teachers they barely knew, as a national tragedy of untold proportion and impending threat unfolded. And I was scheduled, as I was each semester, to greet and speak with them at 11 am.

My primary goal was to make sure the kids felt safe. By the time we gathered, the news had spread, not through staff gossip, but because of parents calling kids to check on them and, in doing so, to tell them the news, and in turn, students calling parents to check on them. So when the kids, and the full staff, gathered in the cafeteria, I, not yet 40, with no spouse, partner or children of my own, had to be the wise and calm adult – indeed, the father.

Churning in my trivia-laden mind was a fact that I had learned in college: that southeastern Connecticut, home to the U.S. Coast Guard Academy and the defense contractor euphemistically named Electric Boat, which was in fact one of only two manufacturers of U.S. nuclear submarines, was strategically considered to be first strike territory in the event of a major foreign incursion. What horrible knowledge to have at such a time. For once in my life, I kept trivia to myself.

I can only paraphrase what I remember saying to the students that morning, since I had neither the time nor the concentration to commit thoughts to paper in advance. But I faced a room filled with anxious 20-year-olds, other people’s children, children who I did not know and who did not know me. There was no buzz, no boisterousness; there was no need to quiet them down.

David, the director of the NTI program, introduced me and I asked each staffer to introduce themselves with their name and their title, as we always did. Then it was my turn to say something.

I acknowledged that there had been a tragedy that morning in New York, and assured them that if they had not already spoken with their parents, we’d make sure they had time to do so very shortly. Then I said that they were probably sitting there thinking — that, in the face of massive tragedy, their pursuit of theatre study, or a theatre career, might now seem insignificant, or perhaps frivolous.

Then I told them why they should banish those thoughts. They needed to continue on with exactly what they were planning at that point in their lives. They should not be swayed by whatever had occurred that morning (since we knew only of the results of actions, not the source or human toll, as I spoke). If they already loved theatre enough to spend a semester away from home and from their school among strangers in order to learn more about it, then surely they could feel, as I did, that theatre was the only means we had to express our feelings about the world. I had committed my life to theatre 16 years earlier, upon college graduation, because I had no other choice. Theatre was what fascinated me, moved me, fulfilled me and challenged me. It was also the means through which I had come to understand life and other lives, cultures, even worlds.

I urged them not to see theatre as irrelevant, as expendable, in the face of horror, but instead as profoundly necessary. I believed, and hoped they would too, that theatre, and indeed all artistic expression, might be more essential now than ever, since perhaps through the arts we could come to express our own feelings about what had happened and help others to come to terms with it as well. I told them, using a phrase that I would later find many were using, that unquestionably the world had just changed. But I also said that the world had changed a lot since the days of Greek drama, and that theatre had survived and continued to be meaningful to many people. Then I told them to use the phones or send e-mails if they wished, to return in an hour for lunch, and go back to class.

I do not think my talk was revelatory in the grand scheme of words spoken that days or in the days, weeks and even years that followed by people wiser, better known and better spoken than I am. But apparently it served well enough for my small audience, because the staff stayed, pretending that this was just another work day, the kids returned to class, and the semester continued as planned, as, slowly, America returned to a new type of normal.

When I finally went home that night, and turned on the television, I was very grateful for the O’Neill’s lack of televisions in that too stingy for cable, pre-broadband internet-era, because as I saw the images of that morning’s tragedy, what had been inconceivable became all too real. Had I seen them, I wonder whether I would have had the strength to keep the staff on site (an unpopular decision with them at the time) or to give the talk I instinctively and perhaps impulsively gave. And that talk, while hardly the St. Crispin’s Day speech, had achieved its own theatrical goal, even as I had given vent to my truest feelings about theatre in my life, in the face of great tragedy.

* * *

A coda:
Two weeks after 9/11, NTI had booked a trip to New York, for a day of theatergoing with the students. David and I debated the wisdom of taking such a trip so soon, but, with no official caution given by the government, we decided to stick with our plan of business as usual. David did have to grapple with one parent, who had heard from a friend with a friend at the FBI that there was a new threat, and wanted his daughter to stay away from New York. David successfully convinced the concerned father that if his daughter was pulled from the trip, a domino effect would ensue, and that the trip would be ruined for all. I joined the group for the journey, since if I was actually advocating risk, I should share in it.

The day passed without incident. The NTI group saw some other matinee while I saw, with unintended irony, Strindberg’s Dance of Death. I accompanied the students to an evening performance of Mary Zimmerman’s transcendent vision of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. At 11 pm, we were on our bus headed back to Waterford. In the darkness of the bus, pierced here and there by an overhead reading light, we passed through Westchester, and David and I turned to each other almost simultaneously, confessing our mutual relief. Theatre has its power, but there’s nothing like heading, safely, home.

This post originally appeared on the American Theatre Wing website.