The Academy
In a strange twist of dramatic fate, in this first year that USC is offering 100% free tuition for its theatre MFA programs, I was appointed director of the MFA Playwriting Program.
Thank you, or I appreciate your concern.
The formal title is Dramatic Writing because students get to go over to the Cinema school to learn screenplays & teleplays. But the truth is, we ground in theatre, it’s what we do best.
To be honest, It’s not yet a wonderful job. I liken it to the returns department at Target, they only come to you when something isn’t working.
But the good thing is that it is a ‘possible’ job on its way to being an ‘amazing’ job.
I don’t know if I will be around to enjoy the fruit of that labor, but the nice thing about a start is that one can attempt a large overhaul. With charm, of course.
Immediately, my wonderful department chair, Rena, and I found some dormant courses we could awaken, and extend other courses to year-long study.
I could see a focus that could come into being. Leaning deeper into the classroom. When you are the smallest school in a big private seven-billion-dollar university, the shiny objects can lay sway. Perhaps trying the Amish approach in a bustling sophisticated environment creates a unique balance. One only needs imagination, pen, and paper.
I gave my dean an ambitious list of twelve big changes and surprisingly she agreed to eleven. I tried to sneak in a challenge to university labor policy around teaching assistants, but she read the document too closely. Drat! Just because you work in it, doesn’t mean you can’t try to dismantle capitalist structure.
My first plan of action was to change up how we choose our candidates. Instead of voting we leaned into intense conversation and communal agreement and in exchange we were able to welcome our top two choices.
The biggest change is in attitude.
What happens when students don’t really have an issue with curriculum, but in expectation and promise?
This summer I decided to meet each student one-on-one in their community. I bought them a meal, and we leaned into their hopes and challenges, on both the academic and personal level.
Not surprising, it was one of the most moving endeavors of the summer. Dare I say, even spiritually enlightening. To meet artists in their passion and their want is everything.
Of course, no idea is ever truly original.
Many years ago, when I was struggling as an artist, incredible mentors in my community sat with me over tea, or a meal, and re-grounded me in my possibility. I see you there, Morgan Jenness, Paula Vogel, Lue Douthit, Terry Wolverton, Eloise Klein Healy, Beah Richards, Maria Irene Fornes, Claire Peeps, Rose Portillo, Sheila Scott Wilkerson, Natsuko Ohama, and Mary Joan Negro, among others.
So, we ritualize this practice and move it forward with each generation.
Which reminds me, the other thing I did in collaboration with was to reimagine our return to school.
We require our MFA writers to attend an orientation the day before classes, which starts with information about protocols, followed by a shared lunch with the MFA actors.
This year, my collaborators, David Warshofsky, the head of MFA acting, and our veteran Yoda, Natsuko Ohama, agreed that we should break bread, and then pull apart into our individual meetings. Start with the bonding.
We invited returning students, faculty, and staff, to line the wall of the theater we were meeting in. All new students entered to a welcome line, akin to something I remember we used to do in the Pentecostal church I grew up in.
Immediately, in just this small gesture, reserved expectation gave way to joy and bonding.
We asked some MFA acting and writing alumni, Ashley Rose Wellman, Kai Zhang, Mayank Keshaviah, and Mehrnaz Mohammadi, to welcome our cohorts. Their testimonies were so intensely beautiful, and indeed, incredibly welcoming.
Then David, Natsuko and I, outlined a larger, more global idea, for art in this moment.
It was inspired by my years at Cal-Arts, when my then Dean, the great playwright, Erik Ehn, would open the semester with a larger thought about our role in the world. I loved it. We all need inspiration in these troubled days.
At this moment in our very sealed off campus, we are asking our students to embrace the world, and immediate community, but are struggling to engage in true public discourse around Israeli/Palestine, which rocked many campuses last semester.
If not in the academy, where does one wrestle with the biggest issues of our culture? When security becomes primary focus, the chilling effect on free speech is on display in our newly gated academic village.
After our shared meal, we arrived at our orientation meeting, opting for a picnic table instead of conference room. The feeling was warm and collaborative. Students will always have concerns, but great to see it combined with hope.
Days before classes, I attended a faculty leadership retreat that featured four different kinds of fries, a faculty development day with HoneyBaked sandwiches, and a freshman welcome with a jumbo hot dog. That I still managed to lose five pounds on my health and wellness kick was a miracle.
In that week we focused on conversations around student religions and spirituality. The highlight for me was the presence of Varun Soni, the dean of religious life at USC, along with Rev. Brandon Harris, the associate dean, and a wonderful mindfulness meditation led by Mark Miller, the director of Buddhist life on campus. When you hear the enlightened express their own vulnerabilities and grief, it shrinks a five hundred seat theater into a small little chapel of thought. The simple act of breathing together with the entire faculty did something to the room.
School started with a roar. I find myself exhausted and exhilarated all at the same time.
I am cradling a brave group of undergrads, half of whom are stage management students, through a Latinx Theatre class. We’ve already read and discussed Maria Irene Fornes’, Mud, and Marisela Trevino Orta’s, The River Bride, and they are in it to win it. There’s always one, and the presence of wonderfully charming & eccentric Freddy is giving me much life.
Over on the graduate side I have the MFA2 actors in Solo Performance, and the MFA3 actors and MFA2 writers in a survey course on directing. We started with a section on Beckett that was wonderfully absurd.
I was asked to be the first faculty guest for a seminar that all freshmen are required to take. It was beautifully intense and moving to be in a room with such young and spirited artists. I asked the large crowd to find the person they knew least in the room. Impossible, I know, but they went in search and found their perfect partner.
I asked them to respond to a Joe Chaiken ‘Question of Character’, “What is the thing that people cannot see when they look at you?”
They took it very seriously, bonding in the process, and revealing themselves in trusting vulnerable ways. I had never seen so many freshmen hug each other without prompting.
I ended my non-stop two weeks of academic activity on Friday by moderating a panel after the performance of a new musical about Frida Kahlo, performed by visiting international artists from Korea in their native language.
I can’t lie, it was complicated for me but featured a virtuoso all woman group of performers and creative team. Along with my colleagues David Roman and Esther Chae, we had the chance for a brief, but wonderful, exchange with the creators of this K-Pop concert meditation on the famous Mexican painter.
This heatwave is no joke. I was walking to my car after the show & sweating with every step. A young student ran over and introduced himself, telling me he is enrolled in the freshman seminar. He quoted my lecture and sweetly said he is a member of the black sheep family and often feels alone, but art is a great comfort for him. He was surprisingly emotional as we talked. We stopped at the bottom of the parking lot stairs, and I reached over and hugged him, and said, “Welcome to the black sheep family, go find your tribe, and make some great art this semester.”
His eyes lit up, he smiled and said, “Yes, professor, yes, I will.”
Thirteen weeks to go, but my work feels already done.