1. I took several students to the NYSTI board meeting at the Capitol yesterday. Aside from the disappointing outcome, we discussed what, if anything, was learned from watching our public servants in action. One of the students was frustrated that Larry Schwartz, who Governor Paterson handpicked as Chairman of the NYSTI board, referred to Artistic Director David Bunce's remarks as 'drama'.
Whenever someone who works in the theatre asserts themselves, rationally or not, their behavior is dismissed as 'drama'. When used this way, the word both ignores anything meaningful that was presented and subtly derides the profession as practiced. I don't like it, though I suppose I'm being dramatic.
If a politician asserts herself, it can dismissed as 'rhetoric'. Could a supermodel's complaints be seen as 'posturing'? A doctor may have 'poor bedside manner'. A policeman? A minister?
2. Grades are in, the college is closed for the holidays and plans are being laid for the next semester.
Sage's new Dean of Education, Lori Quigley, has put together a great lecture series that I will be looking forward to, beginning with Tom Porter, author and Mohawk Indian Chief.
Dr. David Salomon in the English Department will be bring British Poet Laurate, Carol Ann Duffy, to campus in April.
Our Creative and Performing Arts Department will be producing The Heiress and Seussical.
More to come on all of that...
3. Happy Holidays to all. It can be a tough time of the year, but I hope everyone finds comfort in family and looking forward to the future. It's funny...I look forward to Christmas all year long and then get within two days of it and am not sure my mind, body or spirit will hold out. Still, I'm going to make it. Best wishes for 2011.
I spoke with Senator Roy McDonald at the Troy Farmers' Market today and discussed my concerns about the imminent closing of NYSTI and how it will affect Sage. Understandably, he explained the financial disaster that our state is now in and how he is in triage mode--helping to fund essential services like health, safety and education.
Of course, I take some exception to word "essential", but if I were to call the arts "essential to the human spirit" it would probably necessitate a collective eye-roll from my readership. Still, in my mind no two human services are alike or without their worth--comparing an art gallery to well-baby clinic is like comparing paintings to babies. I can't imagine a world without either.
The senator told me that these are hard times and that 900 state employees are being laid off. I replied that 15 of them work at NYSTI. He also gently explained that he doesn't understand artists and academics, but that he has to live in a real world with serious troubles. I am aware that is code for something, but as both an artist and academic, am probably not equipped to understand it. I have heard Rush Limbaugh say similar things on his radio show, as if artists and academics live in some alternate universe where rising gas prices, devastating taxes and the chaotic state of our government doesn't affect us. If only I could live in that rarefied world.
I guess I admire Senator's forthrightness, but would still like to live in a country where the arts mattered more to our government officials. FDR understood that providing employment to artists during the Great Depression was essential to the nation's spirit. Winston Churchill knew it was important to keep theatres open during the attacks on London in WWII. Both of these great leaders lived in scarier times than we do now. Even Lyndon Johnson observed that, "...the arts and humanities get the basement." Ask anyone at SUNY Albany in Theatre or Foreign Languages if that is true.
Speaking of London, I am about to take 20 students to study theatre there for two weeks. Their government-supported arts are affordable and of excellent quality, which makes the UK an essential destination spot and their arts an essential economic force. Can you imagine a London without the National Theatre or the Royal Shakespeare Company?
Maybe the NYSTI ship has sailed (though I hope not), but when this recession is over, we will still have hospitals, firemen, unions and a state government for all. I doubt that the arts will have fared as well. The cuts in funding by Mayor Jerry Jennings to Park Playhouse, Capital Repertory Theatre and other companies are appalling and will certainly cripple one of the organizations this year. Whether our leaders see it or not, artists pay bills, provide service, vote, live and die in this country. When a politician says that they support the little guy, they should know that includes artists.
To quote playwright Arthur Miller (eye-roll everyone), "Attention, attention must be paid."
Blogging continues to take a backseat to directing. I have been working on NYSTI's production of A Christmas Carol and my extra time has been at a premium.
There has been a strange energy during this rehearsal period, probably due to the fact that NYSTI is not named in the upcoming state budget and is now running out of funds. A Christmas Carol could very well be the organization's final production. Since the departure of Patricia Snyder in April, over the half of NYSTI's staff has left or retired. Though their workforce is downsized and those remaining are covering many jobs, I have been impressed with the staff's adaptability. NYSTI has had to grow leaner and meaner. Change has empowered the company members and it is sad that their rebirth coincides with their being on life support.
The future seems bleak, though there are bright moments. An intern-organized talent show fundraiser sold out the Meader Little Theatre last weekend and may be repeated later in the month. A group of concerned citizens has formed to begin fundraising efforts for the company. Finally, The Record has graciously offered to profile the show in a three-part series leading up to the official opening on Sunday.
What does NYSTI's possible demise mean to Russell Sage College? In a word, much. The company has been generous with both shared materials, teaching and opportunities for our students. Because of NYSTI's training, Sage is able to turn out highly skilled and competent theatre professionals. Indeed, several alums have been hired to work on A Christmas Carol, plus we have twelve current students onstage and behind the scenes. Access to a company like this is a great learning experience for our majors and Sage is committed to maintaining professional theatre opportunities on our campus. At best, I hope it will be NYSTI. At the very least, I hope it will be NYSTI in another form (probably minus the NYS).
For now, we have A Christmas Carol and I can't wait to see the special magic that the school audiences will bring to tomorrow's performance. It's that energy--honest, unjaded and bright-- that will be missing in Capital Region if NYSTI folds.
I have been a bad blogger lately--overcommitted, as usual. I am opening A Piece of My Heart for the Sage Veterans Week 2010 on Thursday and have began today rehearsing NYSTI's production of A Christmas Carol which opens in December. This week of overlap involves twelve-hour days of straight rehearsal, but on a snowy morning in November, who would want to be doing anything else?
Other events for the Veterans Week 2010 can be found on the website: www.sage.edu/veterans. The scope, ambition and creativity of the week really serves to show what Sage does best: collaborating with each other and the community to produce quality artistic, therapeutic and educational offerings.
When I get back to directing one play, I will get back to blogging. There is a lot to say about NYSTI and A Christmas Carol. Like the Dickens' tale, let's hope that the past, present and future align to bring the company the salvation it deserves. More on that later.
Do come see A Piece of My Heart this weekend. Mention that you read about it on my blog and you are eligible for five dollars tickets. Call 244 - 2248 to reserve seats. I hope to see you there.
"I'm not a feminist, but..." are words that you hear often at Russell Sage College. I expected something different from a women's institution, but when you teach you have to meet the students where they are and begin from that point. My colleague Leigh Strimbeck knows this well and explores these issues with honesty and theatricality. Her "devised" theatre production (created by her and the cast) of MIRROR MIRROR looked at body image and the media and WAITING FOR JOE used Beckett's framework to examine cyberbullying.
I just got back from a preview of her latest creation, appropriately titled "I'M NOT A FEMINIST, BUT..." The play looks at the question, why do young women reject feminism as a label, though desire equality with men on every level? It is a paradox that often leaves me scratching my head, though I have to remember that I am an approaching middle-aged white male who, statistically, will make more money than women and deal with less gender discrimination in my career. So who am I know to know about this question?
The evening is a vaudeville of songs, skits and dances that addresses different points of view on the same topic. A series of interviews with women ages 20 - 60 captures the ebb and flow of the feminist movement, a now-you-see-me, now-you-don't panorama. The "Feminists Gone Wild" have a man-dog on a leash and a roving eye for straight girls. "Ghosts of Feminists Past" examines the three waves of the feminism and the spiritual linkage of Alice Paul and Betty Friedan to women of today. My personal favorite number is performed by a scowling troupe of tap dancers to "Mother of Pearl" by Nellie McKay. The comic lyric refrain of "feminists don't have a sense of humor" plays dissonantly against the angry, frustrated dance that never blossoms into joy. It makes me feel sad to watch it.
I suppose that in-between place is where these students live, somewhere in the middle of being told what they should be and wanting just "to be". We ask our students to be "Women of Influence" at Russell Sage College and maybe they struggle with not wanting to appear too assertive, too unladylike or even, too bright. It is an understandable dilemma when our media floats words like man-hater, femi-Nazi and makes other gender distinctions daily about our female politicians, sports figures and business leaders. That is why I am proud that Leigh and our students are looking at the topic and deciding what to do with the word. How do we honor the past and move towards a non-issue?
By a wide margin, the faculty of The Sage Colleges on Friday voted to no longer require standardized testing for their undergraduate applicants to Russell Sage College and the Sage College of Albany. This change will be effective immediately.
“This is in keeping with the faculty’s view of a Sage education,” said Dr. Terry Weiner, Sage’s provost. “We believe our educational philosophy and practices should be reflected in our admissions policies.
“The SAT continues to be a less reliable predictor of first year performance or success in college compared to high school GPA and class rank. Our own studies at Sage have confirmed this. We continue to rely on our assessment of the whole record as the best way to assess students ready for Sage,” according to Weiner. “In this time of economic distress students should not have to choose between expensive cram courses or tutoring for these tests, or worry about losing ground in the competition for college admission.”
Bob Schaeffer, Public Education Director of FairTest notes that “Fortunately, more and more colleges have recognized the folly of fixating on the narrow, often biased, information provided by standardized tests and moved toward test-optional admissions.” Surveys by FairTest show that schools that have made standardized tests optional are widely pleased with the results. Many report their applicant pools and enrolled classes have become more diverse without any loss in academic quality.
Sage already utilizes a “holistic” approach to student evaluation: academic preparation – rigor and achievement – is the most important factor followed by recommendations and students’ personal profiles.
“Our approach to selecting students is very similar to the way students choose a college: we look at many factors, keep in mind a student’s background and interests, and assess the match between that student and Sage. No one factor is a ‘driver,’ it is the sum of the whole,” according to Sage’s vice president Dan Lundquist. “If a student wants to submit test scores we will be happy to receive them, just as we want to learn about their accomplishments and goals. But if a student doesn’t submit scores we won’t assume anything, just as if they don’t tell us about a hobby. We don’t guess about what’s not in the application, we focus on what’s in an application.”
1. I attended a great reading last night by Elizabeth Brundage, a novelist and creative writing instructor at Sage. Her new book, A Stranger Like You, looks at power and gender in Hollywood. I got a very dark sense of the story from her reading, which also weaves terrorism and the stoning of women into the plot. It also uses the elusive "second person" narrative, which I hadn't been exposed to since English 101.
I went to the reading last night because I have to miss author Nicholson Baker, who is speaking at Sage next week. For more information on that reading, go to:
2. Peter Pan has opened and is playing to packed, enthusiastic houses. I am attending this weekend, but only barely got a ticket myself. The musical has been extended by one showing and will now close on October 8. For more information on Peter Pan, go to:
While I'm on the topic of theatre, NYSTI opens The Miracle Worker on campus this weekend. It features the talents of several Sage students and alums, plus the NYSTI directing debut of friend, John Romeo. It is an amazing story about the power of education to make a difference in the lives of others--don't miss it.
3. I'm preparing a talk on "Assertive Communication" to present for the New York State Bar Association in October. I feel very confident about spreading the message of assertive communication, but what is embarrassing to me is that I don't always practice it. Where do you lie on the scale of communicators: the passive communicator, the aggressive communicator or that dreaded combination of both, the passive-aggressive communicator?
I am certainly learning as much about myself doing this research as I am going to teach to others.
Back to blogging. I'm beginning to discover what my students must feel like with rehearsals, classes, meetings and then, a paper to write on top of it all. Blogging was easier when school was not in session, but Sage is now into its third week of classes and beginning to pick up steam. Very soon, freshman students will be collectively hit with the enormity of their work load (so will faculty) as the honeymoon period is almost over and assignments begin to pile up.
Before the blitz begins, our entire first year class met yesterday for a Constitution Day town hall meeting. Organized by the English department, the Living-Learning communities and the WORLD (Women Owning Responsibility for Learning and Doing) program, the meeting is an opportunity to acquaint students with specific aspects of the Constitution, then to have an open microphone session for them to discuss those aspects with an experts panel of faculty. Yesterday's panel included Provost Terry Weiner, and Dr. Stephen Schechter and Dr. Pamela Katz, from History, Law and Government. The event was moderated by English department Chair, Dr. David Salomon.
The discussion focused on the 14th Amendment, which covers the rights of all citizens born in the U.S. The students turned out to be very curious about illegal immigration and why the government has failed to adequately enforce it's own laws. Some of the highlights of the student discussion included:
The physical act of rounding up 11 million illegal immigrants and sending them back home would be a disaster of epic proportions.
Information about immigration policy and amnesty proposals put forth by George Bush, John McCain and President Obama.
An idea to eliminate closed borders all together and re-appropriate enforcement funds to education, health and fighting terrorism.
That government should punish the powerful businesses that employ illegal immigrants and not the disadvantaged individuals themselves.
There were of course no easy answers. One student wisely said she would vote with candidates who addressed the problems humanely and realistically, allowing for the problems we have already allowed to escalate. Another topic of discussion focused on free speech and flag, Koran and book burning. It was generally agreed that if we live in country with free speech laws, then there will occasionally be things we don't want to hear, or see set on fire.
Two representatives from the New York Times Reading Program (another first year initiative) were in attendance and impressed with Sage's town hall approach to Constitution Day, raising provocative issues then allowing students free expression. My colleague in WORLD, Dr. Sybillyn Jennings, calls it the "pedagogy of voice", that is, giving the students a place to speak aloud the ideas that they are developing. Without too much horn tooting, it is something we do well at Sage.
Peter Pan is coming! The Creative and Performing Arts Department will present the classic musical September 24 - October 3. Rehearsals are now into their second week, there are upward of forty theatre majors and children from the community involved, and yes, they will fly. The production is being directed by Professor Michael Musial, Chair of the department.
Hearing the music and the excitement around the department got me thinking about the Peter Pan phenomenon. The story celebrated it's centennial several years ago and with a major new 360 video production now touring the West Coast and aiming for ours, it only seems to be gaining in popularity.
To get at the "why", I spoke with Dr. Tonya Moutray, who is an Assistant Professor of English at Sage. Dr. Moutray did her doctoral work in English Literature, studying all-female communities in eighteen- and nineteen-century British literature. She has also pursued scholarship on J.M. Barrie and Peter Pan.
DB: What interests you personally about Peter Pan?
DB: What should I know about Pan/Barrie that I can't find in Wikipedia?
TM: Wikipedia doesn’t address “why” Barrie’s play (and later, novel) became such a cultural phenomenon in the first half of the twentieth-century. Peter Pan is not merely a magical character whose wily adventures entertain audiences; his story is also about loss and abandonment. Peter reports that he left home as an infant. When he tried to return, his mother had put bars on the window and a new baby had replaced him. In the end, Peter decides to forgo the Darlings’ invitation to live with them, leaving Wendy behind. British audiences in the teens and twenties were drawn to the idea that literature can preserve childhood. They likely took this tale to heart after the atrocities of WWI. Thousands of young men lost their lives, never to return home again. If he is one of these “lost boys,” Peter can’t return really, because he is dead.
Another historical backdrop to this story involves colonial expansion. In spite of signs that Great Britain’s colonial endeavors were failing in the interwar years, plenty of sons, husbands and fathers took off for the colonies, many of them leaving families behind. Neverland is a kind of colonial outpost with its own native population. One chapter of the book is entitled “The Great White Father,” a reference to Peter’s role in Neverland.
The other major reason, I think, that Peter Pan has had an impact culturally, is that his sexual orientation is ambiguous. Traditionally, women and girls have played the character of Peter in stage productions, furthering this ambiguity. While he performs boys’ roles, he prefers, ultimately, to be in the male company of the Lost Boys rather than in a nuclear family. While his sexual orientation may be in question, the fact that he never grows up means that his representation can suggest all sorts of cultural anxieties about deviant sexuality without giving anything away. Certainly in the wake of the Oscar Wilde trials, the public found a “safe” receptacle for these anxieties in the figure of Peter, a boy saved from the tragedy of having to face the afflictions of the adult world. Indeed, as I argue, the figure of Peter Pan pops up in a variety of other fictions by writers such as W. Somerset Maugham and Evelyn Waugh, both of whom were homosexual and, like Barrie, made boyhood into a kind of fetish.
DB: How has the message of the story changed over the century? Has that been influenced by the different mediums of storytelling?
TM: I think the multiple film spin-offs have kept the tale alive for many American children while watering down some of the central concerns of the narrative: What normative roles are young men supposed to take on in contemporary society? Remember, Peter does not want to go to school or take on a profession. Why isn’t Wendy as free to choose a life of adventure? What is she sacrificing and gaining? The question now is how to make the tale “new”; how to keep it relevant in contemporary society. I think that current readers may forget about its historical backdrop and the array of cultural anxieties that made the play and novel resonate so powerfully.
My thanks to Dr. Moutray for her insights. I will continue to blog about Peter Pan as our Sage production approaches.
From the world of good news, the Sage community was informed yesterday that Russell Sage College has moved into the first tier (rank 131) of “Best National Liberal Arts Colleges” as ranked by U.S. News and World Report, 2011 Best Colleges. Sage College of Albany was included in “Best Regional University (North)" and Russell Sage College was also listed in a feature of “A+ Schools for B Students,” touting schools where students with potential grow and thrive.
Sage also appeared in Forbes’ America’s Best Colleges report published earlier this month. In the listing of the 600 best colleges in the U.S., Russell Sage College is listed at number 408. (SUNY Albany is listed at 410)
The criteria for selection are important gauges of how we are doing our work. For instance, according to Forbes, the ranking is designed to help undergraduate students evaluate things that many believe are important criteria when selecting a college:
Do students enjoy their classes and overall academic experience?
Do graduates succeed well in their occupations after college?
Do most students graduate in a timely fashion, typically four years?
Do students incur massive debts while in schools?
Do students succeed in distinguishing themselves academically?”
Happily, we do these things well--but I could have told you that. I don't how the news of our rankings will be disseminated, but with luck, it should help with recruitment and fund raising in the coming year.
Best wishes to all those beginning school in the coming week. If you're in academia--Happy New Year!
You know you've been teaching for a long time when a former student calls you up and offers you work. So has been the case with me and blogging has had to take a backseat for a few weeks.
Samara Neely-Cohen, a former student of mine from a summer camp in Colorado, is in her second year as Founding Artistic Director of the Santa Fe Theatre Festival. Samara has always been in my top-ten of favorite students--wickedly smart, talented and wise beyond her years, Samara is on her way to making her mark on the world. She has now put together two seasons of challenging plays that employ the talents of theatre artists from New York, Los Angeles and Santa Fe. It is a passionate, ambitious company, probably still finding its identity, but grounded in practicality with plenty of long-term goals. The season opened last night and if the enthusiasm of the audience is any indication, this Santa Fe company is here for the long haul.
I was brought in as a replacement director for Danny and the Deep Blue Sea, by John Patrick Shanley. It is a gritty and lyrical play--a sort of precursor to his screenplay, Moonstruck. With less than two weeks of rehearsal (and Samara in the cast) we are readying for our opening tonight. The production has the added bonus of a visit from Mr. Shanley for a gala event next weekend. I will be back in Troy and have to miss that excitement, but told the cast that if Mr. Shanley likes the production, to tell him that I'm brilliant and if doesn't like it, explain that I was only the replacement director.
Whatever happens, I will cherish this experience of working as colleagues with someone who I started teaching when she at 16. I've really been able to see the educational process come full circle here in Santa Fe, where things I taught Samara were learned, utilized and now, are being taught by her.
I made a check mark today off my Theatrical Bucket List and visited playwright Eugene O'Neill's birthplace in New London, Connecticut. O'Neill is the only American playwright to win the Nobel Prize; he also won four Pulitzer Prizes for Drama. His writing--dreamy, dark and intensely personal--changed American Theatre from a melodramatic frolic to unhinged reality.
Monte Cristo Cottage was the summer home of the O'Neill family. It was so named for The Count of Monte Cristo and the acting role that earned O'Neill's father his fortune. O'Neill based two plays upon the setting of the summer home: a sentimental valentine to the American family, Ah, Wilderness!, and his sorrowful autobiographical nightmare, Long Day's Journey into Night. The home definitely lives in the world of the latter play.
To a theatre nerd, the day couldn't have been much better. I was joined by my friend Jefferson, another O'Neill affectionato. Our tour began at the home's front hedge, from where you can almost imagine the character of James Tyrone, Sr., calling out merrily to neighbors while his resentful son Jamie toils with the pruning shears. The docents pointed out all the renovation shortcuts that O'Neill took making the home look elegant, further reinforcing the dramatized miserliness of Tyrone. The "spare room" upstairs (next to Eugene's) where mother Ellen/Mary retreated to indulge in her morphine addiction was locked and used for storage. This was disappointing, but left to my imagination the secrets and shame that happened on the other side of the door. Finally, the summer room, which O'Neill describes so specifically in his stage directions, is dark and cheerless, no place for a family of depressed addicts to spend the day.
After Monte Cristo Cottage, we went two blocks down Pequot Avenue to gaze at the actual lighthouse O'Neill used to evoke the mournful and lonely fog that fills the family's home. I asked the docent if there was still a watering hole in New London where the O'Neill men would have drank. She sent me to to the Dutch Tavern, which lives down a hidden, narrow street by the harbour. The Dutch Tavern was a great way to end the day in New London. The wood paneling inside was dark with beaded varnish and the mirrors behind the bar were clouded with age. There was rough wide plank floorboards, a painted tin ceiling and antique card tables. The barkeeper told us proudly it was the only bar still operating in New London that was patronized by O'Neill. The ambiance proved it and we drank a few pints to the playwright's memory.
Coincidentally, I teach Long Day's Journey into Night in an interdisciplinary theatre and history course alongside Professor Andor Skotnes. While I might take a day discussing O'Neill and the play's characters, Andor really brings them to life, filling the class in on how history got them to where they are. Potato famines, Irish discrimination and morphine use for female "hysteria" are topics that make the autobiographical play seem even more real. History brings depth to any subject and O'Neill's history of his family--loving, haunted and ultimately helpless, lives still at Monte Cristo Cottage.
I recently finishing teaching a Sage After Work course on persuasive speaking. The make up of the class was very broad. No theatre people, but an accountant for the state, a registered nurse, two IT professionals, an account executive for Pitney Bowes and assorted nine to fivers looking to improve their communication skills.
The students studied rhetorical devices by Shakespeare and Aristotle, plus made up a few devices of their own. With the help of youtube, we analyzed persuasive performances in films like Network, A Few Good Men and V for Vendetta. We also analyzed historical speeches ("I Have a Dream" and "The Gettysburg Address" and speeches from literature (To Kill a Mockingbird, Inherit the Wind).
Finally, we spoke. Then we spoke some more. We ended up speaking a lot.
Columbia University recently hosted 50 fellows from the World Economic Forum for a week of "...voice, breathing, rhetoric and improvisation." The New York Times article on the event describes student resistance to such activities as "tapping their buttocks" to release tension and learning to use "the entire body and not just words" to express themselves.
I have had similar experiences training speakers, like those in the Sage After Work class. When a human being takes a breath, they prove their mortality, express vulnerability and build confidence all at the same time. More often than not however, breath is the first thing to go when public speaking. Now, imagine telling someone who has taken years of breathing for granted that, "I'd like to see you breathing more!" Their eyes roll, there is perhaps an impertinent sniff and a short, unproductive breath that moves the shoulders more than fills the diaphragm.
This is the challenge and delight of teaching theatre skills to civilians. When working on these skills we are doing no less than recreating ourselves to be genuine, believable human beings, not waxworks or pod people. This takes time and this is why we train. Learning to be comfortable in possibly uncomfortable situations. Using breath to relax and knock down the walls that obscure our aura. Speaking colorful rhetoric to awaken the ears of sleepy, unfocused listeners. Trusting the body to work for us, not against us.
According to the article, the students at Columbia ended up doing well. The students at Sage did too. They wrote and performed final speeches that were passionately expressed on meaningful topics. This is the reward of working with students who may never appear onstage, but use new skills to bring authenticity and theatricality to everyday situations.
My faculty office is on the second floor of the Schacht Fine Arts Center. Abrasives wizard Elmer Schacht gave the generous gift towards this building, but for some reason his beneficence did not extend to the air conditioning. Schacht is an inferno this week.
To escape the blaze, I have moved to a "satellite office" across campus. Buchman Pavilion was built in 2001 with lead gift from Natalie Buchman. Constructed in an age much closer to the apocalypse, Buchman Pavilion is swimming in air conditioning. The room has a gracious, open ambiance, a centerpiece glass dome surrounded by columns and the Russell Sage College seal jig-saw puzzled into the tile floor. There is a scattering of sofas, tables and chairs, with a convenient coffee bar serving Starbucks.
The space is cleverly designed to connect three or four buildings--Sage Hall (a dormitory with a bistro grill), the classrooms of Gurley and Walker Halls and even the back of Bush Memorial. This officially makes Buchman a hub through which you must pass, a central location for coffee, dining, seeing others and being seen. Additionally, it faces a walking mall over what used to be Ferry Street, before the underpass. A vista of glass opens the possibility for even more people watching as Sage employees pass on the mall between First and Second Street--into the library, into the copy center, into Science Hall and out of public safety.
It's a wonder I can get any work done in Buchman at all.
A friend of mine noted that college campuses can be intimidating to "civilians" who may feel that dining halls, academic theatres and lecture spaces are hard to find, that the overabundant energy of youth can create a microcosm crowding out interested seniors and others. If so, this is a shame. Buildings like Buchman Pavilion have a lot to offer in a community like Troy. Coffee and pastries for ladies who lunch, a respite for frazzled clerks from the courthouse and a comfortable rendezvous spot for those who need one.
Today, I blog, I chat, I eat and I drink, in comfort. Thank you, Natalie Buchman.
Post Script: Maxine, my canine office mate and friend, passed away on July 2.
I went away to visit family for a week and returned with a vicious head cold that has had me in bed for three days. My mind and body have not really been at Sage, but I still wanted to offer some thoughts.
To keep this entry Sage-related, I have to say that I'm worrying about the health of my office mate. She was diagnosed with bladder cancer in December and, as the prognosis promised, is not getting any better. I haven't mentioned that my office mate is an eleven year old Scottie dog named Maxine. I have had the privilege of bringing Maxine to work with me nearly every day for eight years. She greets every student at my door, snoozes on the couch while I teach and begs food from me when I eat at my desk. It a routinized life that seems to suit us both.
Maxine is a great mascot for each production I direct. She attends all rehearsals, but sits quietly while the cast works. When the humans go on a ten minute break, she goes to work--howling greetings, pattering around the stage floor, basking in the enjoyment of the company. Maxine is a real show dog, toe nails for tap shoes and a slick black coat.
I'm not sure I have an identity on campus without Maxine on lead. She gets all the greetings and I get the crumbs. I'm somewhat shy, so am very comfortable with this set-up. Maxine, my platonic wing-dog. It's been this way for eight years and we've fallen into a "Marley and Me" type of existence. Unfortunately, we all know how that story ends. This is where my mind is today. For now, I'm grateful for Maxine's time on the job and the friendly world she's opened up to me just by taking me along.
I'm spending a week away from the Sage campus and am up the hill at RPI, where I'm on faculty for the Basic Trial Skills Program with the New York State Defenders Association. The program pairs experienced trial attorneys with communications coaches to teach public defenders about both trial and client-centered practice.
This is my third summer with the lawyers and I learn as much about acting from them as I did from my best theatre professors. More than that, I learn why public defenders desperately need such a program. Most are in counties or practices that have them overtaxed with clients and under-resourced for the work they are expected to do. Under such circumstances, the idea that we are "humans defending humans" can go out the window and our state defense practice can turn into a machine. This week endeavours to teach active listening, empathy and trial advocacy to amazing young lawyers who take back new skills to the damaged system within which they practice.
This "lawyer boot camp" is the brainchild of Jonathan Gradess, Executive Director of NYSDA. Jonathan is a mastermind at pedagogy, team-building and the timetable. He is simply one of the best leaders I've ever known. The week is a continual process of fine-tuning, to get the program to the highest caliber it can be. Jonathan enlists amazing trial attorneys and communications coaches from the Capital Region, New York State and beyond. Cessie the mitigator is from Troy; Jamie the retired P.D. is from Chicago. Joy the acting teacher is from Los Angeles; Henderson the trial attorney is from North Carolina. And the list goes on, all professionals who give a lot of time and energy to training our next generation of public defenders.
By the end of the week, the students have picked mock juries, delivered opening and closing statements, practiced cross examination and direct, plus listened to lectures, practiced in communications labs and participated in group discussions. The twelve-hour days are exhausting, but the commitment is inspiring. They all go home tomorrow, hopefully energized and changed for the better. I'll be in my acting classroom this year, maybe staging horrific dramas like they see everyday in real life. Knowing their stories and their struggles deepens my understanding of the human condition when presenting it. In that way, an artist can be a public defender. Call it understanding at an arm's length.
After a week of fairly gloomy news in my house, I wasn't surprised to open the Times Union today and read that Moody's had downgraded Sage's long-term debt rating. Sometimes you have one of those bad weeks and this news was just par for the course. However, the fact that it wasn't surprising to me is also a tribute to the administration at the Sage Colleges. Our leadership has been committed to transparency on an ongoing basis, so little information that was in the article was news to me. Someone once told me, "the devil you know is better than the devil you don't." In my eight years with the institution, the financial news at Sage has rarely been good. We all personally know what this stress and frustration feels like, perhaps having struggles with a household budget or simply because we live in New York State. What I admire about our administration is their willingness to be open about money issues, the steps being taken to correct problems and even regularly seeking advice of employees. There is comfort in shared knowledge.
Sage has had many triumphs recently, including both good news in admissions and development. On a faculty level, I work with many happy students (I wish there were many more) who love their experience at Sage. Students are expected to complete high levels of research, performance and scholarship before graduating and they rise to that challenge. Their attitude and accomplishments reflect well on our commitment to their learning and I wish a Moody's rating could show that, too.
I am now serving on a task force to redesign the first year curriculum. Our work has been very ambitious, making great steps towards developing a more focused and creative course of study for freshmen. The efforts will reinforce our already excellent retention rate, but also help our students to see themselves as part of a global learning community. This comes from the use of shared texts in core classes, including The Penguin Atlas of Women in the World, by Joni Seager; and Half the Sky, by Nicholas Kristof and Sherry WuDunn. It also comes from placing students in Living Learning Communities, where they share a common living space and a core of common freshmen classes. What is exciting to me is when, through classes like English 101, Nutrition 101 or Physics 101, students see knowledge and ideas being shared across many disciplines. We are breaking down learning silos at Sage and developing students who will think both broader and deeper.
Still, the Moody's rating is a reminder of work yet to be done. I don't think Sage has ever figured out its "unclear niche", which encompasses two colleges, both co-ed and single-sex, and a graduate school, having different programs offered on each campus, in two cities separated by one river. It is a puzzle that, while it fits in theory, doesn't create a clear picture. Until that puzzle is figured out, we can't count on admissions to be the driving revenue source of our institution. Also, cosmically, Sage is simply in need of a break, some piece of luck that will help to move the institution on to the next level. I know we create our own luck, so I am hoping that the strong work being done to shore up the financial and academic picture at Sage will allow that cosmic magic to happen--soon.
I am going up for tenure and promotion in the fall and spending the summer putting together my file for review. This process involves both information gathering and analysis, then reflecting on that information to make my case to the review committee. The stakes are high because if you don't get tenure, you are asked to leave the institution. If you do, you have a job for life--in theory.
This process puzzles people outside academia, who are not given the same assurance of job security. Tenure can be a tool to recruit and maintain excellent faculty, but it can also make it impossible for the institution to shed themselves of faculty who are under-performing. I knew a tenured faculty member whose favorite coffee mug read "I'm dead wood, but they can't fire me." Smug as that seems, he happened to be a very good professor. I've seen all examples and believe that faculty with sufficient passion and egos continue to achieve long after tenure.
The American Association of University Professionals (AAUP) sees tenure as necessary to protect academic freedom, but remember Ward Churchill? He was a tenured faculty member at the University of Colorado who ignited national ire by declaring that the technocrat workers in the World Trade Center were "Little Eichmanns." Whether or not his status gave him the right to say that, tenure did not protect his job after the the Governor of Colorado called for his dismissal.
So note to self: if tenure is achieved, at least keep your nose to the grindstone and remember it is your job to provoke deep thought--maybe even in a Churchillian manner. For now, I'm sifting through eight years of Student Opinion Surveys and looking at my competence on a one to five scale. These surveys are a student's final gift or revenge, as I get to disclose the glorious and shameful in the pursuit of job security.
My greatest insecurity in starting this blog is my shaky grammar. Grammar was a course I bluffed my way through starting in the seventh grade. I did not love the instructor or the rigidity of the subject, so only passed, and that is what my grammar skills are today: only passable. Writing terrifies me. Would you believe that to get an M.F.A. in acting, no writing is required? Script analysis and make-up application are essential to the degree, but writing is not.
I can only timidly grade student writing, but am still offended by egregious errors. I think if you are going to make writing mistakes, proofread carefully and then make the same mistakes and misspellings consistently. Of course, texting has certainly affected the way students write. R U LOL @ dis? OMG--reeeeeallllyyyyyy? Shakespeare played fast and loose with the English language and brought it to great and lasting prominence, so maybe that is what the texting generation is doing today: revolutionizing language, but with technology. As someone who encourages rule breaking in learning, I appreciate that. Still, we all need to be competent at the rules before we break them and that is where students often trip up.
I always defer to Dean Sharon Robinson on this subject. Besides her administrative duties, she is an English professor and teaches a course called "Perfect Grammar" which motivates students to call out everyone on their imperfect grammar. Dr. Robinson practices what she preaches. She is an elegant speaker and once glared at me in a curriculum meeting for dangling a participle. She believes that simple clarity is the point of good grammar, but notes that issues of class and snobbery are often how people are judged when they misspeak. I asked for a quick grammar lesson to include with this blog. Here are her thoughts: Most egregious written errors: * Thinking that "however" and "therefore" are conjunctions that may be used like "but" or "so"; they may not. * Misuse of the semi-colon. The semi-colon separates two sentences related in content (except for the lesser use, to separate items in a list when individual items in that list contain a comma). * Making plurals with apostrophes. We do make possessives with apostrophes. All those yard signs that say "The Smith's" are wrong. I can barely stand to talk about apostrophes. * A lot IS ALWAYS TWO WORDS (unless of course one means "allot," i.e., distribute). Most egregious spoken errors: * Subjective vs. objective pronouns: Mary gave a lovely vase to me husband and me (not "I"). If you wouldn't say "Mary gave a beautiful vase to I," then don't use it just because someone else is a co-recipient. * Lie/lay: We lie down; we tell our faithful dogs to lie down. "Lay" is either the past tense of "lie" (I lay down for a nap yesterday at noon) or a different verb altogether (Lay your books down on the table).
Thank you, Dr. Robinson, for the tips and this handy reference website: www.grammar.quickanddirtytips.com. Hopefully, this blog will be my opportunity to clean up the mess I started in seventh grade and write in fear no longer.
Welcome, to what I hope will become a weekly look at Russell Sage College through the eyes of a faculty member and proud Troy resident. This first blog will be like the "pilot" for a television series: an introduction of characters, the setting of time and place, and plotlines that that carry you in future, so...let the set-up begin!
A career in academia is not a job, but a lifestyle choice. There are long hours of teaching, socializing, organizing and learning during the school year and though I might get a breather in the summer (thus I begin this blog), September is never far from my mind. I teach theatre courses in the Creative and Performing Arts Department, several freshman courses in the general education curriculum, summer courses, direct two productions a year and act occasionally with the New York State Theatre Institute. Russell Sage College is a close-knit campus with terrific students and abundant intellectual resources. I hope to tap into the minds of my colleagues when writing these blogs and cover many of the lectures and events that occur on campus.
My wife and I live downtown with our nineteen month old daughter, an old dog and middle-aged cat. As working parents, we have become very skilled at juggling schedules and individual needs to maximize our family time and enjoy Troy. Until last fall we were happy homeowners, but outgrew our tiny house in Little Italy. We are now renting a larger space on Washington Park while figuring out our next step, much of which has to do with where our daughter goes to school. We love Troy for the festivals, markets, architecture, restaurants and friendly people. Living here has been very good to us.
That's enough set-up for today. Like they say in acting, if you give it all away, the audience won't want more. Enjoy your June and I look forward to sharing my thoughts with you.
