“I have had a most rare vision. I have had a
dream.”
--A Midsummer Night’s Dream, 4.1.204-205
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When I decided on a career switch from newspaper reporting to a teaching many years ago, I knew I needed to shift my professional perspective. How would I change the semi-anonymous introvert behind the notepad into a “sage on the stage”?
So as I
waited to begin my college studies to become a teacher, I figured the best
course of action was to work as a guide on a haunted hayride and to study clowning.
I could think of no better training for controlling an unpredictable group and
developing a fearlessness about making mistakes.
Now I’m 17
years into my teaching career. I’ve taught several different high school
English courses, earned national certification, even taught a graduate college
class. Yet still I find the need for new challenges to keep energizing myself
and my teaching, and to refine my focus and perspective. This year may be my
greatest challenge yet, as I work as an intern for the Saratoga Shakespeare
Company.
This
opportunity began last summer. After watching SSC’s latest offering, Love’s Labour’s Lost, I thought how great
it would be to join them on stage. It’s always been somewhat of a dream of mine
to be an actor, although I have no real experience. (Unless you count a junior
high production of Donald Payton’s The
Boarding House Reach. I played the protagonist’s father, Mr. Maxwell.) I
approached SSC directors Barbara and Lary Opitz and Tim Dugan after the show about
the possibility of them taking on a teacher intern. Already they train a number
of college students each year in the on-stage and behind-the-scenes workings of
a professional Shakespearean production. Why not do the same for a local
teacher? Someone who teaches Shakespeare, but doesn’t specifically teach or
work in theater? Someone like me. (Okay, actually me.) What could be more
natural than putting a teacher on a stage? Already, I “perform” in front of 125
students a day. I do about five 50-minute sets of “standup” (as in I rarely get
a chance to sit) each day, five days a week, 40 weeks a year.
And they
said yes!
It was only
then, with my dream about to become reality, that I realized (gulp!) that the
thought of being on stage outside the
classroom makes me as anxious as a bookworm asking the head cheerleader to the
prom. (Something else I never did. Although I did play a good bookworm in high
school.) But it is this very anxiety that shows me I must do this. I tell my
students all the time to dream big and to work to fulfill their dreams. Now,
after reaching my half-century mark, I figure it’s high time to practice what I
teach.
And so, for
five weeks this summer I will be a teacher intern in the Saratoga Shakespeare Company.
What does that mean? That means that I will be training daily with an ensemble
of 13 college interns to learn the ropes of staging and performing a
Shakespearean production. That means I will be taking the same classes learning
about voice, movement, and other components of the theater. And that means that
I will take part in one of these Shakespearean productions. (Breathe.) Our
intern show will be a traveling production of the comedy Much Ado About Nothing. The intern production lands in Congress
Park on Aug. 6 at 2 p.m.
Despite
the anxiety, I am ecstatic about this opportunity that SSC is giving me. “I
have had a dream,” as Bottom put it, and now thanks to SSC I get to live it.
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