"Talk About Your Experience in the Arts at Hockaday." Go.

It's alumnae week at Hockaday.  I got asked to speak to some other wonderful Hocka-alums.  Here's what I had to say:

Hello!  My name is Katharine Gentsch (though my Hockaday peers and teachers know me as “Katie Beth”) and I graduated from Hockaday in 2007.  I have to tell you--when Beth Wortley asked me to speak to you all about how the arts at Hockaday have shaped my adult life, two questions immediately arose in my mind:

-- The first: have I reached the pinnacle of my career?  Because I distinctly remember telling my best friend in this very conference room during a HAARTS assembly that I hoped Hockaday would some day deem me fabulous enough to return and speak to people.  Now, I should probably mention that in that assembly we were listening to hyper-famous and successful Tony and Grammy award winning Hocka-alums speak about how Hockaday had influenced their careers and I should probably confess that I have not won any Tonys or Grammys...but in case this is my singular opportunity to stand at the Hicks podium, I will relish every second with you!

and the second question was:

--I graduated from college less than a year ago, so do I have enough of a history as an adult artist to merit speaking about it?

However, Beth Wortley is one of my favorite people and someone who along with the rest of the Hocka-Arts faculty has shaped my life trajectory in a very big way so I was not about to tell her ‘no.’  Furthermore, and more importantly, no one from the Hockaday performing arts faculty has never told me ‘no,’ which is really what I want to talk to you about today.

From the time I entered Hockaday in 7th grade, the arts here provided a playground, a haven, and a means of navigating a tumultuous and exciting adolescence and young adulthood.  After a rocky and overwhelming transition into Hockaday during my 7th grade year, the 8th grade musical provided me with not only an opportunity to really find my first Hockaday friends, but also an exhilarating artistic outlet and my first real taste of performing.  By the time high school rolled around, my interest in the performing arts had blossomed into a full-blown love affair--and the Hockaday Arts Department was more than happy to fuel the fire.  

Like most Dallasites, I spend much of my time in the car, and like most Hockadaisies, I am fundamentally and proudly a nerd.  In the majority of the many hours I spent in the car with my mother driving to and from school, I conducted the radio.  I would turn on Classical 101.1 and conduct the car stereo.  At the time, I was taking the rightfully infamous and beloved class: History of Art and Music with Mr. Long, and my mother suggested I mention to him my interest in conducting.  So I did.  I stopped him in the hall one day and asked him how I might learn a little more about orchestral conducting.  Rather than guiding me to books or a website or even live symphonies, he offered to stay after school for an hour a week and mentor me in conducting.  These lessons culminated in the opportunity for me to conduct “Stars and Stripes Forever” for the Hockaday Orchestra.  This wouldn’t have happened anywhere else.

My junior year of high school, I had an interest in directing a one-act.  This wasn’t terribly uncommon, but I really wanted to direct a musical.  I asked if I could direct Jason Robert Brown’s one-act, two person musical about adults going through a divorce, and Hockaday said yes.  So I music directed, staged, helped light, and costume The Last Five Years.

By this point, I was fully invested in choir, show choir, playing in the orchestra, assistant directing plays, dancing and choreographing for the Hockaday dance company, and performing in the yearly musicals.  May I choreograph with strobe lights and have girls rising onto the stage from the trap door in the orchestra pit? Yes.  Can I choreograph a musical number from Legally Blonde, the musical?  Yes.  Can I choreograph a tap number with the other tappers in the dance company? Yes.  Hockaday still hadn’t said ‘no’ and the Last Five Years had gone well, so my senior year I thought it was perfectly manageable to do another musical.  I decided I should personally direct, choreograph, light, sound design, costume, and music direct Rodgers and Hammersteins’ The Sound of Music.  In Clements Science Hall.  And you know what?  They said ‘yes.’  They guided me through auditions for 60 students, helped me cast the show, and shepherded me through the entire process of putting up a huge musical. 

I’m sure you all have these moments, but the further I get from being a Hockadaisy, the more I comprehend how radically unique and incredible so many of my experiences here were.  I’m so grateful to be able to do what I love for a living--a career grown from a seed sown here; I’ve performed in theatres locally, just finished a theatre tour, and in July I start a contract as a singer at Tokyo Disneyland.  It would be easy to say that I’ve just been lucky, but the fact is that I have been prepared--and more importantly--encouraged.  And the majority of that preparation and encouragement is from my experience with the incredible people in the Arts department at Hockaday.  The difference between the arts programs here and elsewhere is that other schools have teachers; Hockaday has mentors.  Every single faculty member in the arts department happily makes a personal investment in any student that expresses a need or passion or curiosity. Girls here have big ambitions and big dreams.  I was very much an average Hockadaisy in this way.  Because the faculty and arts department here never set a limitation on my dreams, I didn’t either.  I still don’t.  And that’s what’s so unique and amazing about what the Arts foster here at Hockaday.