Dissertation on Book-Learning as a Catalyst for the Re-Identified Artist

During my annual summer cleanout this year, as I rummaged through miniature ballet shoes, crinkled photographs, and various other scraps of memories from my childhood, I stumbled upon a journal from my 3rd and 4th grade years. These years, and all others which fell between pre-k and sixth grade, were spent at St. John’s Episcopal School. In this journal I depicted my effervescent teachers, loving friends, and miniscule, petty problems that only a nine-year-old would deem challenging. I molded clay. I played in the sandbox. I ran with scissors. If an assignment was due on Thursday and Garfield the Guppy’s fishbowl needed to be changed Wednesday evening, it was acceptable to turn the work in on Friday. Or Monday, if I could conjure up a new excuse. Life was fabulous, and school was entirely burden-free.


Unfortunately, my education did not continue in this simplistic fashion. In seventh grade, I entered The Hockaday School. At Hockaday, creativity was praised, but algebra problems and grammar studies took precedence. Unlike at St. John’s, students were expected to lead class discussions rather than the teachers. This horrified me. You mean these fifty-year-old “professors” are just going to sit around and watch their class do the work? (At this point, I decided that perhaps the profession of teaching merited some consideration.) Nonetheless, I missed the tranquil, lazy days at St. John’s and resented Hockaday for making me truly think. I know—a school forcing a student to think--What a horrifying thought. For the longest time, I could not comprehend the use of all of this “book-learning,” as Richard McKenna coined it. That is, until my junior year.

Junior year at Miss Ela Hockaday’s School for Girls certainly lived up to its formidable reputation as being the most difficult year in high school. It was sheer and total hell.

I loved it.

Every minute, I was thinking, re-evaluating, and re-defining. I was dissecting the anatomy of sharks and frogs. I was pulling my hair out, sweating anxiously over the outcome of “The Minister’s Vigil” in The Scarlet Letter. I was taking risks. I was drained both mentally and physically by the end of each day, but I anticipated the next. Had I not experienced a plethora of mental breakdowns and constant chaos, I would be an entirely different person today. Hockaday’s hardships have acted as catalysts for my redefined identity. I am religious. I believe family is the most important aspect of life. I love all mediums of music, I am much better suited for the 1940’s, and I adore reading. How Hockaday, a secular school which emphasizes the individual and self-promotion, did this to me is truly bizarre. But it did.

My hardships evoked changes in me physically, mentally, and spiritually. Hockaday mutilated and destroyed all self-esteem, confidence, or courage I had as a child by the time I was fifteen. By the time I was seventeen, Hockaday had challenged me to re-build that confidence on my own. My mother could not help me. My best friend could not help me. I was no longer puppeting my peers or elders' thoughts. I reconstructed my identity uninfluenced by those who had previously directed and controlled my life.

My senior year was an even greater challenge than my junior year. Junior year was, as I have stated, a time of personal re-evaluation. I allowed myself mistakes. Senior year, contrarily, was my year to prove to myself (and nine universities) how I could own this identity and use it to benefit my environment. This, of course, is where the arts come in. My junior year I directed a beautiful one act musical theatre piece-- The Last Five Years. This was a great challenge for me at the end of my junior year. The piece follows a man and woman (needless to say, over five years...) and their relationship for better or for worse. The depiction of this relationship is where it becomes exceptionally interesting. Cathy, the female protagonist, moves backwards in time from the end point of their relationship to the first date. Jamie, on the other hand, moves in normal time. The two meet in the middle of their relationship (and the production) in "The Next 10 Minutes." I didn't really mean to babble about this show, but the point is that I'm not sure I completely had my bearings when I directed this piece. I briefly mentioned some of my invovlements from senior year, but without a doubt, my most time consuming was the musical I directed at the same time I directed The Last Five Years the preceding spring.

I had intended to direct Fat Pig, a brilliant, thought-provoking show by Neil LaBute. I'm not sure how qualified I would have been to direct this; I've only been in a few plays myself (excluding musicals) and assistant directed one Moss/Hart production. However, the plotline intruiged me. It's not a Tracy Turnblad story; a guy falls in love with an overweight (but beautiful) woman. He becomes obsessed with the comments of two of his co-workers and ultimately cannot handle their relationship because of it's social implications. The audience easily recognizes that the overweight protagonist is the better individual, but she does not "get the guy." I think the show brings up a number of important issues, and it's always been a personal favorite. However, at my all-girls school (with eating disorders inevitably running rampant) they wouldn't allow me to produce the show.

Thus, I went towards its polar opposite: The Sound of Music. I know it seems like a ridiculous alternative to an experimental modern play, but it's a show I always wanted to do and it was a challenge in so many other ways. I had a forty person cast and crew. I choreographed the entire production. I did all vocal and theatrical training and rehearsals, and I did not have an AD. I also had an interesting space to work in--a lecture hall. This truly required me to think outside-the-box. Ultimately, the show was a success and I dearly loved my cast (who, I am proud to say, bonded more than any bunch of kids I think I've ever seen in my life...), but it was a challenge. Had I not rebuilt this personal confidence, I could not have handled directing this mass production.

I feel that as a director you have to know yourself before you can know others. A director not only has to dissect and discern everything about the character portrayed, but a director must also know the character of the actor they are working with. Sometimes, the combination of the two can be disastrous. If I weren't sure of myself, my beliefs, or my merit as a director, the kids would have run all over me and the show would have failed. I needed that freshly rebuilt identity to run a production.

In retrospect, I often wonder what would have been the outcome of continuing my education at St. John’s and at a more traditional, less strenuous high school. I admittedly yearned to be at such schools during those rough years at Hockaday. Still, I can’t imagine having gone anywhere else. What I never understood was that Hockaday never really cared how much precalculus I absorbed or if I would remember the structure of a rat’s intestines. By thrusting such demanding academic standards upon me, I was personally challenged. I was challenged as a student, artist, and educator (isn't that what directors are, anyway? all three?)

Richard McKenna, a graduate of the University of North Carolina, made certain claims about what he felt comprised a proper education. In his speech, “New Eyes for Old: The Quest for Education,” McKenna touched upon the concepts of book learning, moral education, and some vague third medium of education which he struggled to describe. Generally speaking, I agreed with his thoughts on “moral education”—that it does not (usually) happen consciously, but rather it is “thrust upon” a person ambling through life. McKenna further elucidates his thoughts by discussing his thoughts about a “completed moral education.” (I happen to believe such a thing does not exist.) McKenna then dissected the concept and importance of “book learning.” Originally, McKenna was reluctant to study at a university. As I had an affinity for art and creativity, so McKenna had an affinity for nature. Similarly, as I resented Hockaday for “taking away my creativity,” McKenna feared a University would reject his passion for the natural world and intangible concepts. Propitiously, McKenna stumbled upon Thoreau’s Walden, the epitomic synthesis of intellect and nature. The Last Five Years and the Sound of Music were my "Walden's." McKenna gradually learned to weave his creativity and passion into his “book learning” he had received from the school and, over the course of his four years at the University of North Carolina, he established the foundation for a proper education. This is what I strive to continue to do at Rhodes College, my current venue for re-identification.

It seems people often refer to the end of education as the end of college, but I believe McKenna would agree with me in saying that college is only the beginning. School does not teach you calculus. (Well, perhaps it does for some, but it certainly isn’t for me.)

School teaches you how to learn.

School establishes the fundaments for a lifelong education. With the help of trials and tribulations, art, friends, enemies, and all other vicissitudes of daily life, I suspect McKenna and I will be just fine. Oh! And how could I forget books? We must have books—the opportunity to delve into someone else’s psyche. I do love to read. I'm reading a brilliant book by Daniel Levitas right now, actually. In fact, I believe I’m going to go read right now. Goodbye.