LEARNING FROM STUDENTS: AN INTERVIEW WITH LILY BRAY, HIGH SCHOOL ACTRESS

 

Above, you will find a video about Erskine Academy's theater program in my home state of Maine, under the direction of Mr. Nored.  Last year, Mr. Nored and his wonderful group of students presented my play Confession: Kafka in High School for the state high school one-act play competitions. Even though I have lived in Maine for most of my life, my plays are rarely produced in my home state: I can count on one hand the number of productions of my plays in Maine that I haven't directly been a part of myself. So it was exciting for me to see that they were putting on my play, particularly since it is one of my personal favorites.

Time and again, the universe likes to tell us that, as Disney Land says, it's a small world after all, and not only was Erskine Academy putting on my play, but one of the actors, who also served as a student director, was the daughter Heidi Bray (who I knew as Heidi Ryder), a high school friend I was in a number of plays with lo those many years ago! Knowing that the daughter of a friend I had fond memories of going to one-act competitions with was now in a competition play written by me was surprisingly moving for me and gave me an interesting sense of... I don't know.... perhaps symmetry is the best word. 

Heidi is the blonde young lady... I'm the short guy being strangled affectionately

Heidi's daughter is named Lily, who at the time of this writing is a senior and an honor student.  Since I know her Mom and her grandmother, I thought this might be an opportunity for me to connect to an actual student who was recently in one of my plays and get direct feedback about her experience, what she and her cast mates found engaging, and to hear her thoughts about the piece as a whole. Since I no longer teach but still write a great deal for high school students, I felt this would be good for me and good for my writing--- particularly since I have been toying with the idea of writing a companion piece to Confession which would feature the character that Lily portrayed (a character named Miss Delisle, a principal at a high school, who is actually one of my favorite characters I have written in a play for students).  Lily kindly agreed to meet with me via Zoom (how else do people meet nowadays) to chat about her experience. The fact that she was not only a performer in the piece but a student director as well (something I think is a great thing for Mr. Nored to do, giving students these creative leadership roles) gave an extra layer of insight. 

Lily has always been interested in theater. Her middle school only had a theater program for one year when she was there, but she loved it and decided to shadow the drama class at Erskine when she had the chance for a "move up day".  As soon as she was a freshman, she got into her drama class, and through the drama class, got involved with the theater club.

Confession: Kafka in High School was my attempt to make themes explored in works like Kafka's The Trial  relatable to high school students, by having a character named Connor K (or Constance K when performed by someone who identifies by a female, like in Erskine's production) wake up to find himself or herself in a conference room at the the high school, accused by Ms. Delisle of having done something against the rules and being told to confess to his or her crimes. The only problem is, no one will tell Connor or Constance what they are accused of. From here, it leads to some of the issues of the absurd and existentialism, as well as the nature of authority that Kafka (and many others) approach in their classic works. 

Lily tells me that she and her fellow students thought a great deal about the questions of authority and what control (or lack of control) students may have in certain situations. I asked Lily if her portrayal of Miss Delisle, who we agree is very manipulative with her authority over students, was inspired by any real-life experiences. 

"When she is tearing the students apart, that is definitely a real life thing," she told me. "Not all teachers, but some teachers, will use their power to scare you into things.... No teacher has ever done this to me, but I have seen it happen, teachers using their authoritative control. Miss Delisle used her power to get what she wanted in the end."

Lily is rightfully proud of decisions she and her production mates made in terms of the set. One such decision I absolutely loved was adding pet door in the set for a character named Mr. Demetri, Miss Delilse's vice principal and yes-man. It resembles a doggie door, and is used only by this character who acts like lap dog to the character. It is a perfect example of making a choice that is not in the script (largely because I would never have thought of it!) that heightens both the character and some of the more absurd and darkly comedic themes. "We wanted to play up the fact that Mr. Demetri is the complete minion of Miss Delisle," Lily said. "Whatever Miss Delisle has, he has the.. well, the Wal-Mart version, if you will.... and no one else used it but him."

I was very excited to hear some of the other choices the student directors and cast made to heighten the absurdist elements of the play. "In rehearsals we were laughing all the time as things became more and more absurd," she said, which is always good for me to hear. "Every character had an absurdist piece to their costume, and other wacky characteristics." She described a character with a tool belt that hand everything but a tool on it, as well as a teenage girl with a Santa Claus fixation, carrying a Santa bag, and sometimes sneaking in a "ho, ho, ho" on occasion, while she would replace props onstage with cans of Spaghetti-Os (that Lily then later opened up and ate uncooked with her bare hands). 

"I wish you could have seen it," she said more than once, and I wish I could have seen it, too. 

I think the most rewarding thing for me to hear was how Lily and her other student director were very much into collaboration with the rest of the cast. Giving the actors a chance to own their characters is so important, to encourage young actors to make choices and commit to them. That's is one of the most important things to learn as an actor.  And hearing that they engaged with what I was trying to do with my script while also having so much fun meant the world to me. 

Lily tells me that, like myself when I was a student, the one-act play competitions are her favorite part of the theater season. I always loved the bus rides, watching all the other plays from the other schools and meeting other like-minded theater students. My heart has gone out to theater students who haven't been able to have one-act competitions in the way they have always been because of Covid-19, and Lily, like most theater students, has felt the impact of these changes. Still, she is grateful that they found a way to put on a show and compete last winter, and she is all set to act and co-direct the one act play competition this year. 

Near the end of our conversation, I asked her a more general question about the importance of theater and the arts in her school. 

"It's so important," she told me. "Theater club has always felt like a very accepting and very safe space, and I think that's important for the school to see... I love going to theater club because it's like an escape from the rest of my day... you get to release a lot of negative energy by performing and discussing what you're doing. It's completely an awesome time."

That last sentence is also the perfect way to describe my conversation with Lily:  a completely awesome time. Hearing about her experience with her friends and cast mates was a lovely reminder of why I write plays and why I have spent so much of my life working with students. As the title from this post suggests, cliché or not, I learn more from them than I feel they could ever learn from me. It is also a reminder that, in my opinion, theater will never go out of style and will always be meaningful and vital for our culture. 

Thanks for reading my blog. If you want to read Confession: Kafka In High School or license it for a production, you can visit the Playscripts, Inc. website by CLICKING HERE.

  

What To Do When You Have a Bad Performance

Greetings ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Theater is a Sport.  My name is Bobby Keniston, and this is my little place on the internet where I talk about (or, really, write about) theater.  Why? Well, because I love it.

I'm a big Red Sox fan, but a few nights ago, they were pounded by the Orioles in a big way. Last night, however, they fought back against Toronto and wound up winning the game.

What does this have to do with theater, you might ask?  I'll tell you.  There's a reason I call this blog "Theater is a Sport", and it's because I believe that theater is a sport.

And, like baseball, or any other sport, an actor, or an entire cast, can have off nights.

Lord knows I've had them.  Whether you keep tripping over your lines, or staying in your head, anticipating blocking, or tripping over the set, some nights just feel like a disaster to an actor.  Please believe me when I tell you that this happens to everyone.

The first thing to do, if you feel like your having a bad performance, is to try to get out of your head, and salvage the rest of the night.  Take intermission to try to relax and re-focus.  Accept that you screwed up in the first act, and realize that you can still knock 'em dead in Act Two.  A bad performance is all mental, meaning, all thought.  Get those thoughts out of your brain.

Now, if you can't salvage the performance for yourself, and you reach the end of the show feeling as miserable as you did all the way through, accept it and move on.  For one thing, it probably didn't come off as badly as you might think.  And please, please, if you had friends or family in the audience, and they talk to you after the show, complimenting you on what a great job you did, just smile and say "Thank you so much!"  I know it's hard.  You'll want to say, "I felt so off tonight!  This was my worst performance ever!  I was so much better in rehearsal!"  Don't do it.  For one thing, it's rude.  It's telling your loved ones that they don't know a good performance from a bad one, and that's not very nice now, is it?  And, like I said before, everything you were going through in your own mind was probably not as visible to the audience as you think it was.

Don't let one bad performance ruin a run.  In the school or community theater, you probably have somewhere between 3 and 6 performances for a production (maybe more, but we're not talking month or yearlong runs, here).  The more you focus on a bad performance, the more you open yourself up to repeat them.  If, in fact, there is a section of the play that is repeatedly bad or feels under-rehearsed, by all means, talk to the director and others involved about working towards cleaning up that scene or section.  It's okay to want to keep growing and getting better, even if you're a few performances in.  In fact, that should be the goal.  To keep getting better and better and more comfortable with the material.  But, let's say you had a random incident where you blew a line you had never missed before.  Don't obsess about it.  That's like asking to mess up again.

Above all else, remember that theater is an imperfect medium, which is why it is so magical. Mistakes happen when you're performing live.  Embrace it, accept it, and keep moving forward to the elusive goal of perfection, which you're not going to reach.  It's the journey that matters.  It's the dancing on the head of a pin, the experiment of creating something with a group of people that matters the most.

Just keep your eye on the ball, and everything will be okay.

Writing With a Message: How and Why I Wrote "The Re-Programming of Jeremy"

The Poster from St. Paul's School's Production of my play, "The Re-Programming of Jeremy"

So, once upon a time, I wrote this play...

Actually, if you're familiar with this blog, you know I've written a number of plays.  I rarely shut about it.  In fact, in the interest of self-promotion, I will occasionally write things like "You can learn more about my plays by clicking HERE or HERE or HERE," and, of course, please feel free to do so if you're of the mind.  However, you can click on all of those links and check out all of those pages, and even though you'll learn about many of the plays, you won't learn about the play I'm going to talk about today.  This one, The Re-Programming of Jeremy remains unpublished.

But unpublished does not mean without a life of its own.

I wrote The Re-Programming of Jeremy, in its original form, back in 2010, at a rather feverish pace. The play is about a gay teen named Jeremy, who has killed himself after bullying at school and home, and then being sent to a "straight camp," that was designed to "re-program" him, cure him of his homosexuality.  The play is a series of monologues told by Jeremy's friends, family, a teacher, and the woman who ran the straight camp he was sent to.  In the first draft, Jeremy appeared only once, near the end of the play, and gave the longest monologue of all, about tolerance and acceptance.

I wrote the play in two writing sessions, at the Thompson Free Library in Dover-Foxcroft, ME. There was company at my house, and a lot going on, which made it difficult to write, and I had this burning idea I had to get down, so I brought my computer to the library and wrote fast.  The play has gone through a number of drafts since that day in 2010, but it a good deal of what I wrote over those two days still remains.

I suppose the question is, why did I feel it was so important for me to get this story down on paper? Here's the thing--- every time I heard a news story about a gay teen who committed suicide, my heart would break.  Whenever I heard a news story about a gay teen who was being bullied and ostracized, my heart would break.  Whenever I heard a news story about a so-called religious group picketing a funeral of a homosexual, not only would my heart break, I would become so angry and disgusted that people could be so cruel in the name of God.  You see, I do identify myself as a Christian, and I think Christians who spew hate speak are not really Christians at all.  Certainly they have the right not to agree with a certain type of lifestyle, no matter how much I disagree with them, but how does hate solve anything?

I had been thinking for a number of years about writing a play that deals with the subject, but every time I did, it was a piece that was attacking the issue from a very angry, overly satirical way, a way that was just as political as it was sarcastic.  A painfully dark comedy type of play.  And while I enjoy a play like that, and have written others about different subjects in that vein, that style didn't feel right to me inside for the story I wanted to tell.

I knew I wanted it to be a HUMAN story first and foremost, where the characters weren't exaggerated.  I knew I wanted the play to transcend the idea of politics, or, at least, blend the political and the personal.  And, of course, I didn't just want to be writing "with a message".  Yes, all playwrights have something to say, and all playwrights, because they are human beings, have thoughts, opinions, and issues they hold very dear.  But to attack a play just from an issue is a tricky proposition, and, at times, an empty one.  Political theater is great, and can make a difference.  It's been around since theater began.  But, if you don't have characters you can relate to, a strong story, and genuine humanity, then you are not serving any message you may be trying to impart.

I was thinking about my idea one day, when suddenly, I just knew I wanted a character to be named Jeremy, and that Jeremy didn't want to be re-programmed.  I have a female friend from college who's name is Jeremy, though she's always been called Mimi. I think that's why the name Jeremy was so strong for me, even though the character is male.  Just having the name for the character made him real to me, a human being, especially since he was named after someone who has always been a great friend to me.  And so I began to imagine Jeremy.  I didn't want him to be flamboyant, or stereotypical, but just a normal teenager with fears, joys, and hopes like any other.  But also knowing he was "different" from the norm.  And then I began to imagine his family, and how is mother wanted to understand him, but couldn't, and how is father tried so hard to love his son, but had his own demons he couldn't conquer.  And it just sort of spread from there.

There's a play I've always liked a great deal called The Incident at San Bajo by Brad Korbesmeyer.  It is a long one act that won the Heidemann Award from the Actors Theatre of Louisville.  It tells the story of a man who tried selling an elixir to residents of a trailer park.  Turns out, this man then poisoned the water of the park, and what he was selling was the antidote.  Only seven people bought it from him.  These seven people tell the story in a series of monologues.  It's a great show, captivating, and I had the chance to direct it once with a high school group.  I love how the show has a documentary feel to it, described by its publisher as a 60 Minutes segment.  The actors answer unheard questions, and tell their story.  They are in different locations, represented by different areas of the stage, and are very different types of people.

I thought this aesthetic would serve the story I wanted to tell very well.  So I decided to give it that same "documentary" type feel in my script.  When Jeremy, who is dead when the play begins, finally does appear, he is somewhat otherworldly, a complete break from the documentary, which had an effect I thought would prove to be powerful.

By writing the play as a series of monologues, it allowed me to get deeply inside each of the characters.  Now, I've never been a teenage girl, or a jock, or a gay teen for that matter, but every character, in some way, came alive for me in some way.  Even the Rev., who's views on homosexuality were the complete opposite of mine.  I found myself digging deep for the humanity of each and every one of them.  Trying to understand their beliefs and opinions, even though it was difficult at times.  And by doing so, not only do I feel the play has a strong message for audiences, the act of writing reinforced a strong message to me--- we are all people.  And though sometimes people are capable of being cruel, even without knowing they are being cruel, they are still people. It is so easy to lose sight of such things when we focus strictly on the political side of an issue.

Even though Jeremy has never been published, it remains one of my favorites of my scripts, and contains some of the best writing I have ever done.

I have a great deal more to say about The Re-Programming of Jeremy--- the initial production, which I self-produced, the wonderful people who believed in the show and helped make it stronger, and how, even now, I am working towards getting the script into as many hands and venues as possible--- but all of this will be reserved for tomorrow's blog post.  So if your curious to learn more about it,  and how it's been rewritten after different productions, and how it's changed over the years, come back tomorrow and read PART TWO of my discussion on the play.

(CLICK HERE to read part two)

And if you are a producer, or teacher, or community theater director who might be interested in reading the show and producing it, drop me a message at theater.is.a.sport@gmail.com.  The licensing rates are very negotiable and fair, and I have seen first hand how audiences react to the piece (which I'll discuss tomorrow).

Until next time--- remember, it's great to write with a message, but make sure the message comes packaged with deep characters and a good story.  And don't be afraid to let your writing teach you something along the way--- it's a great feeling.