Take a breath, take a step, take a chance... take your time.

When you do theater in New York, your schedule is insane. This is simply a fact. I admit that I am more masochistic than many (ten shows! One semester! WOO!), but still. My schedule and my friends' schedules are jam packed. In the first ever entry on this blog I posted this screenshot of my Google calendar from second year. Very little has changed, except that I now refuse to do things on Sunday mornings. The stress of this is huge, and something you must learn to manage. By the end of every semester, I flinch every time my phone buzzes for a call, text, or email, because it's probably someone asking me about my schedule or telling me I forgot something. Your time is eaten up by responsibility... which I realize is, well, growing up, I can confidently say that I know adults with far less busy and far less stressful lives than the one I lead in New York... and who even have far fewer responsibilities (with the exception of paying bills, which is the one major responsibility I don't have yet... though I have started to experience that kind of money strain as I've been paying for my shows).

However, I have been given a reprive of the pressures of time and stress for over half a year.

My work schedule at Montreat is not particularly strenuous. AV crew tends to work at odd hours of the day (generally very early--we often have shifts that start at 6:45am--or very late), and on weekends, but working around 40 hours a week (sometimes less, depending on the conference) with a day off ain't bad at all, particularly when you're used to working 70 hours a week and not getting paid. (When I checked in at Montreat, one of my bosses had to ask me, "Have you worked more than 40 hours in the last 60 days?", something to do with tax forms that I would have to fill out. I responded, "And gotten paid for it? No.") The other thing about the work I do here is that it's not work I must obsess when I'm not on the clock. It's really work that must be done in the room. You don't get very far thinking about artistic ways to do a mic check. But since all of my work when I'm in school is creative, I'm constantly obsessing over it and working on it outside of the rehearsal room so I can maximize the time I have INSIDE the rehearsal room. After Montreat, I go to Ghana, where students from the College of Arts and Sciences (whose NYC workload isn't NEARLY as strenuous as a PHTS student) say the workload is particularly light. I also will not be working on any theater pieces in Ghana beyond some vocal experimentation on my own.

Right now there is the minor "preparing for Ghana" stress. Immunizations and anti-malaria medication are the immediate (hopefully taken care of by the end of this week), then booking a flight, then applying for the visa (hopefully taken care of during Worship and Music, when I have more access to a car than normal).

But beyond that?

Yesterday, I woke up early to do yoga and mediate by the lake before work. I worked the Kirkin' o' the Tartan, a worship service celebrating the Scottish Presbyterian Heritage, with a lot of bagpipes and kilts and the Black Watch tartan. Then I laid in a hammock reading The Cost of Discipleship. Then I went up to Russ' with Rachel and Kim, where we had a family dinner (it was cute) and watched Harry Potter movies which were marathoning on TV. At one point, Rachel said, "Wow, guys, we just sat at watched Harry Potter for five hours," but then we all thought, "There's nothing else we have to be doing right now." The blessing of getting to relax and spend some time with friends, sharing a meal, Rachel flinching every time Dolores Umbridge did ANYTHING, Russ looking at me whenever Dumbledore ignored Harry in the fifth movie (because of COURSE I'm a sucker for the Harry/Dumbledore relationship, it's my entire LIFE)... it was a beautiful way to spend an evening.

It was raining when I woke up this morning--a light rain that made a gorgeous sound as it hit the roof above me. I'm off work today, as I'm the only AV crew member who worked this weekend, so I laid in my bed listening, thinking, plotting out more of the fantasy trilogy I'm working on. (I've got the ending now, which helps a lot.) This is joy, and this is freedom. I'm working the morning shift all week, which means more early-morning yoga and mediation. What I see clearly in this time I've been given is the time to spend strengthening my spiritual life and discipline, so that when I return to New York and the craziness of life there, the joy and freedom and peace of the life lived with time can remain. I think it's possible. I got closer to it this past semester.

I start working Proclaiming the Text tomorrow. Proclaiming the Text is one of my favorite yearly conferences here--it's a conference for preachers trying to figure out how to reach people with the word of God today, now. For reasons that are probably no surprise to anyone, I relate to this group of people coming to Montreat far more than, say, the Youth conferences. Proclaiming the Text and Worship and Music. They're my kind of conferences. And since I'm working the morning shift, I'll be listening to their keynotes. And since Proclaiming the Text takes place entirely in Upper Anderson, I get to admire the beautifully refocused and no longer green lights. (Hilary, Rachel, Russ and I. First day of departmental training. WIN.)

It's nice to be back.

Russ: Hey everyone, you wanna see a trick? It involves Colleen.

Me: What?

Russ: "But you have friends."

Me (automatically): "You have a lot of friends."

One thing I know

The only thing I know in this world is that I love God.

If you do follow your bliss you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living. When you can see that, you begin to meet people who are in the field of your bliss, and they open the doors to you. I say, follow your bliss and don't be afraid, and the doors will open where you didn't know they were going to be.
--Joseph Campbell

Will finish The Power of Myth today. Will start on Bonhoeffer's The Cost of Discipleship tomorrow.

Hallelujah, I'm back!

First of all, I am OBSESSED with the room I'm living in.

Balsam, the lodge I'm in, has undergone much construction in its lifetime. Most notably, a porch was added onto the back of the house. The second floor above the porch became more rooms. Mine is the corner room on the 2nd floor back porch of Balsam. To get there, you walk through this hallway, part of which very obviously used to be the back of a house, and into this charming little addition of a tiny room, where the ceiling is obviously the room and is (slightly sketchily) patched up with screen and sometimes newspaper, the outside corners are windows, and the shelves are planks of wood on metal supports. The dresser is in the hallway because it doesn't fit in the room with two beds (and the room isn't tall enough to be bunked). It is nicknamed "The Treehouse Room".

Needless to say, I love it. It has charm, life, history, and tons of inspiration. Russ said, "This is the kind of room you can sit and write plays in." I say it's DEFINITELY the kind of room you can sit and write fantasy novels in, which is largely what I'm doing this summer.

The absolute joy of being back here and seeing people is overwhelming. All of AV crew is back and ready to rock (and unsure of what we're going to be doing during "departmental training" as we all... have been trained...), and hoping to finally fix the lights in Upper Anderson. (Rachel, Russ and I, the AV theater majors, are tired of the light that's awkwardly focused and cut on the bottom of a door, and the lights that have green gels for no particular reason because green lights make everyone look awful.) We've been going through orientation, dinners, activities, the first Taco Tuesday, and running around our favorite Black Mountain haunts. (Having just sound designed Hamlet, I keep making "Do it, Ingles!" jokes that no one gets.)

More than anything, though, I am overwhelmed with gratitude for the opportunity to be living, once again, in a spiritual community, in a place where God is the focus. While that is how I strove to live my life this past year, and while I insist that I'm independant, the actual, physical relief of such a community is incredible. Group prayer at the beginning and end of events. The fact that saying, "I'm here to answer God's call for my life," doesn't raise huge questions because everyone else feels the same way (though with different personal callings). And it's a place where we acknowledge and embrace the fact that we are all servants. A major clash I have had with theater school has been this attitude, I think. I have heard a lot of talk of "being the lead artist" and "getting what you want" and "YOU have something to say", which are all valid and important (and have helped me build confidence in myself as an artist), but I do better work and feel better about what I'm doing when the focus is not on me. There is something that must be said, and it must be said through me, sure, but I am a servant to that message. The best (and even most personal) work I have done is when I have gotten out of the way of it. The most beautiful moments of my life is when I have felt like a messenger, delivering words that I don't even know the full meaning of impact of. Here, all of our work is serving Montreat and its ministries, serving the conferences and people who come through those gates each week. The beauty of a community of people united to serve is powerful, and it is a blessing beyond words to be a part of it.

Goals for the summer: tackling the bookshelf of religious/spiritual literature (starting with Joseph Campbell), and hopefully doing so mostly while lying in a hammock. Writing the first draft of the second novel of the fantasy trilogy I've been poking at (which will then allow me to go back and revise the first novel). Pouncing on unsuspecting theologians to talk about Job, the Song of Songs, and the theater piece I'm working on creating out of the two of them. Preparing for Ghana. Learning everything I can about EQ and sound systems from my audio engineering major boss. Getting awesome at the musical saw. Getting awesome at the potter's wheel. Climbing mountains. Learning how to canoe. Attending at least three worship services per week. Continuing to learn how to always serve and collaborate with people in a way that glorifies the God in them.

My first night here, it was raining lightly as I went to bed. Lying in my (AWESOME) room, I fell asleep listening to the rain on the roof and hearing people on a neighboring porch playing guitar and singing. Does it get ANY better than this? The very air is saturated with God's presence.

To love our God: the reason we live

Why dismiss anything as being a coincidence?

This is a blog entry in which Colleen will make a lot of declarative statements and claim them as facts.

Yesterday, I left New York for what will be about half a year. I was in tech for about four weeks now (one weekend off), for six shows. (if we count this slightly over a week period where I have not been in school as a part of this semester, I worked on ten shows this semester.) Besides the shows, I was living in Brooklyn, folding paper cranes in Washington Square Park, and having delightful meetings. And that little question of, "What did you learn?" keeps singing in my head. I chuckle at that question, now, because it seems like all the things I've learned are deceivingly simple, or things I am constantly relearning... or not relearning, but continuing to be surprised by.

I have started to learn how to sit still.

I have started to learn how to listen.

I continue to marvel at this thing that we cannot describe but is the unity that runs underneath all of creation. We call it God. We call it Love. We call it by many names and yet the only true descriptor is that is it what it is. I Am That I Am. It loves. And Love seeks for the good of that which it loves, so all of the world is filled with Love's attempts to care for us and point us towards the way to live.

I have learned that attitude is inexplicably important and honesty in how you do what you do is essential. I was not honest during The Maker of Dreams and I was during Tongues, and that actually had a huge effect.

I have learned that life is not about accomplishments.

I have learned that there is joy in suffering.

And I have learned that there is no such thing as loss.

There is only one moment--time is simply how we categorize it, experience it. Everything that has been, is, and will be is all now. Time is not horizontal, it is vertical. In every moment, I am five writing a poem about fireflies, and thirteen listening to heavy metal and hating everything, and seventeen crying on Becker's shoulder after my last musical at ARGS, and twenty waking up from a nap in the theater between the two performances of my successful first directing piece with "Voices of Light" playing on the sound system, and twenty five, forty, sixty, doing things that I have no idea what they are yet. Those moments where something clicks, these coincidences where you met someone once and then ten years later you reconnect and that casual first meeting becomes something more significant than you could ever have dreamed? Those are the moments where it feels like it's all happening at the same moment, for me.

"We are one body," is not simply a reflection on the community of the church. It is the truth of the community of the world. To paraphrase, the different "members of the body" are all essential to the functioning of the body. "If all were an eye, where would the sense of smell be?" I'll play a radical role here and say, "If we were all Christian, where would the challengers be? How would progress be made?" Other religions, atheism... we are all essential to each other in how we challenge each other and develop our lives further.

In this body, in this moment, in this unity we are all connected, and therefore loss is this thing that we create as humans by ripping off the connections and insisting that they simply disappeared, usually because a relationship has changed or because someone is no longer physically there--but they are.

I've just said goodbye to a lot of people I love dearly for a long time. I felt the beautiful pangs of missing them when my train pulled out of New York and I knew I was leaving them. If there is a pain more lovely than the pain of missing people you love and who have made an impact, I don't know what it is. ("And what is gained is loss." Zoo Story.) But beyond that pain is the honest fact that I am the person I am at this moment because they are in my life. They have been God's potter hands to my clay and no physical distance will change that. And in this eternal moment that we live in, everything we ever have been or will be to each other exists at the same time--we simply haven't discovered it yet.

I have learned that it is important, if not essential, to learn how to let go with grace. When we cling to things past, we let those things eat us whole. However, sometimes we must fight. I was in a situation this week fighting hugely for something that needed to happen. And I thought, "Let it go, let it go, let it go," but something told me I shouldn't. I thought about fighting for ARGS over winter break, how that was something I could not stand by and let go of. And I started to wonder, "When should we let go and when should we fight?"

We fight when it matters deeply to do so. And what I have started, and I do mean JUST started, to learn is that as we listen to Love there is a compass effect... Love, wanting the best for us, guides us to where we are meant to go. And sometimes that place is devastating. I was about to say "and sometimes it's beautiful" but I think it's all beautiful, even the devastation. I cannot tell you the number of times lately that I have gone somewhere not knowing why, and then found someone who needs me at that moment. It's actually eerie. One of my friends said to me, "It's strange when I'm having an emotional moment and you DON'T randomly run into me." And I think in listening to this compass we start to align our egos with it. It's a sound that I hear, but I don't know where it comes from or where it's going. (That verse is something I've never understood and have been obsessed with ever since I read it.)

And I don't really know where I'm going. I mean, literally, I do, but I know that God WILL surprise me with what I find there. But I feel like everything up until this moment of my life was preparing me to walk the path that is set before me. Not like, "Oh, now I know everything and I can just move through life!" Not like that at all, but that the preparation work has happened and now it's about walking the road and learning from that road. In a way, I've gone through a complete reversal, from someone who was cynical and jaded and bitter far too early on, to someone who actually lives with joy. One of my friends at PHTS said to me once, "Colleen, you're the busiest person I know and yet you are ALWAYS smiling." (Which, okay, I'm not ALWAYS smiling... but almost.) But actually, I think instead of a reversal, it's a completion.

And whatever path this is that I'm on, it feels right. And generally I don't use the words "right" and "wrong", but this DOES feel right. My last 48 hours have been beautiful. I cleaned the apartment and baked muffins and when I stopped by the theater, there was a dance parade on 8th St. And just as I was starting to feel bitter about "oh all these other cultures have such amazing traditional dances and America doesn't have anything," I saw between a group of Indian dancers and Irish people on stilts... a group of contra dancers. Contra dancing happens every Thursday during the summer at Warren Wilson College near Asheville, and there's always a group of Montreat summer staff there. An amp was being wheeled around with them so someone could call the dance. I nearly cried out of the beauty of seeing contra dancing in the streets of New York. Then I went to the theater of a show I worked on to deliver muffins, and there happened to have been sound problems that day and when I walked in and asked the SM and ASM if I could help... well, I've never seen two faces more gratefully surprised to see me. (I couldn't do much but confirm what they thought and come up with a backup plan, but they seemed to appreciate that confirmation.) I ate my last supper in NYC, Halal food and a cupcake all bought from carts. Another show I worked on opened. As I left the theater, the theater owner poured me a shot of whiskey because "anyone who wears a hat like that deserves a shot of Jameson", and for a second the theater staff, the director, and I all shared a drink in the relieved aftermath of two successful openings. I caught the 3am train after chatting with my assistant for a few hours, and immediately after getting off the train, I headed to church, feeling like I was coming directly from tech, in a t-shirt and pants still dusty from when I checked out that speaker. And I thought, "This is right." I spent over two hours with Becker, chatting about life and musical theater and saying goodbye before he moves halfway across the country. I hung out with Emily and ate good steak that was cheaper than some New York sandwiches.

I think what has made these hours so beautiful are all the people--the absolute joy of being in Bon Air and seeing everyone there, the time I've spent one-on-one with people close to my heart, the strangers and new friends, because all I feel for them is Love--and the knowledge that none of this was an accident or a coincidence.

On that slightly-cheesy-but-I'm-still-completely-serious-so-maybe-it-will-be-charming-not-cheesy note, I am now headed to Montreat.

:D

Is this real life?

I swear I'm still alive.

I had my last class yesterday. I am currently surviving (barely, but that's to be expected) assistant designing in the real world. One of those shows ended yesterday and I felt relatively competent by the end. The other show I'm assisting I absolutely do not have the technical know-how for, but I gaff things enthusiastically and set up ClearCom and can run out and pick up things and I think I got us a discount on a speaker because I smile very sweetly and I'm a girl (and how many girls come into car audio places on Canal talking about speakers?). Learning a TON, which I'm immediately applying into the two off-Broadway shows I'm designing. (Stephanie and I are bonding over the intensity of being assistants.)

AAAAAH.

I also still need to write a play. Oops. Other than that, all school obligations are done.

I have touched the face of God, touching the wrinkled old face of a woman...

I've been rather quiet lately. On the blog, in life. Not literally, I guess. I speak. But I've been saying a lot less and listening a lot more. It's not that I don't have things to say... but what I have to say is deceptively simple. And along the ideas of "what you have to say"... I feel like when we say that we have something we want to say (an phrase that comes up a lot in theater school when creating work - "what do you want to say to the world?"), we really mean that we want the audience to have a revelation and therefore completely understand something. I'm not convinced that's the best way to frame things. Each audience member is in a different place along a different journey, and I think all we can do, and all we ought to do, is guide them. Let them drink if they will--do not force their heads into the water so that they'll drink. You can never save people. You can do everything you can to help them but what you're trying to help them to do is save themselves, or else the cycle will never be broken.

When we come upon suffering in life, the greatest power we have is to love it. Not desire it--that's when you get into self-destructive behavior--but love it. Because once we truly love suffering, it no longer exists. The trick is, if we try to love in order to get rid of it... we never actually love it. It's a paradox that exists throughout mythology and religion, and is supremely prevalent in Christianity. "Whoever wants to gain his life must lose it." "The first must be last." Christ had to fully die in order to be raised to life, and knowing the end of the story couldn't make the dying less.

I've often heard people say, "It's when I stopped looking that I found the right person." I've heard religiously-minded folk say, "It's when I decided it was just me and God that my spouse came along." I had a terribly awful time getting over my last relationship--understandably so, as it was off-and-on (more often on) for four and a half years. It finally ENDED last May, and even after I had gotten over that specific person, I was not over wanting to be in a relationship. I tried to play the single-person-looking-for-a-relationship game and found it beyond frustrating. It was one of those moments when I said, "What if I just gave it all up, the whole idea of being in a relationship, and simply love God?" And that was NOT easy, and I caught myself daily asking, "Okay, have I done enough? Can I have a person now?" instead of allowing myself to live where I was instead of grasping at fruitless strands. (The turn that eventually took was not what I expected, but makes a lot of sense.)

But that's the challenge. Not to knock ambition or progress, but I feel like at least those of us in America don't need anything more about those said to us. They're drilled into our heads to the point where I think we don't know the value of loving what you have, the state you are in, instead of constantly running away or trying to change it.

All that is to say:

When you suffer, love it.

Love the heartbreak, love not getting sleep, love the random twinges of pain that stop you on the street, love the song that reminds you of things you'd rather forget, love the raw throats, love the tired eyes, love it love it love it. The secret is not that love conquers all, but rather that love transforms all, because once you truly love suffering, it ceases to be suffering. Though, it's easier to forget that secret in order to truly love. Skipping to the end doesn't work. It's not about getting somewhere. It's about loving through every moment.

I was chatting with a second year who was having some artistic crisis issues (as you do in second year), and I said, "Life isn't about accomplishments," and she said, "It's not?" and we argued about that for a while. No. It's not. You work so hard and get something and then what? There's always this moment of being frozen or disappointed because not all your problems are solved because there's the giant question of what to do next. Accomplishments are nice, sure, but they're not the point. The point is traveling through daily life.

I went to the Cloisters last week. If you don't know, the Cloisters is a museum (branch of the Met in Washington Heights) that houses Medieval Art and is built from the stones of old cloisters. When you go, you get off the subway and then walk through Fort Tryon Park, which is the park that reminds me the most of the mountains of NC. I LOVE the Cloisters, and going to the Cloisters is actually the most temptation-filled thing for me, because of the very real temptation monastic life holds for me. In the Cloisters, there are two cloisters that are preserved/restored/recreated... the St. Guilhem Cloister and the Cuxa Cloister (with a chapterhouse attached). Last week when I was there, I was walking through the St. Guilhem Cloister (the white one, for those of you who've been there), just walking and contemplating God, and I thought, "This is what heaven must be like. Walking in a square, contemplating God." I shared that thought with one of my teachers, who noted that that activity was outside the confines of time. Because that is an activity that cannot be rushed because it's not about accomplishment. It's not like, "I must get to the corner!" It's, "I must be here and do something that has no end."

What has helped me in this is loving God. Because the secret is, God is in every thing. In every moment. There are religious folk who say, "This is of God and this is not of God." I am not one of them. I cannot presume to judge in that way and I cannot deny God's sovereignty like that. I believe there are things, actions, events that make God grieve but God is there to grieve. So how could life be me running away trying to find God off somewhere far away when all I have to do is look and listen where I am? For God is there. God is here. God is everywhere. God is in everyone.

At this moment in my life, being in a relationship with a person does not even begin to make sense to me, because I am in a relationship with God. I am in love with God, which means I am in love with everyone. Why would I limit that to one person? That may very well change, I admit that, as I continue to move forward in this. But I'm not counting on it, I'm not waiting for it, I am more content than I've ever been. I've taken to hanging around places where people may be stressed... such as tech weeks, or the 3rd Floor Lobby when the 2nd year Collab class gets out, so that I can be a calm, loving presence. It's the best use of my time. And yesterday, as I was sitting there, one of the second years gave me a crown of thorns. "Colleen, do you want a crown of thorns? It seems the most appropriate."

Also yesterday, one of my fellow designers for Zoo Story said, "You know Colleen, I'm more jealous of what you and God have than what Dylan and Michael have." (Dylan and Michael being the cutest couple of our class.) Well. God and I aren't exclusive. You just have to be willing to die.

Them other boys can't teach you how to act!

I would like to take a moment to bow to my first theater teacher, Dr. Fenn.

Dr. Fenn is a sage of theater. Second semester of my freshman year of high school, I took his class, "Foundations of Theater", and I still consider it one of the best classes I've ever taken. It gave us a vocabulary from which to start talking about theater. I look back on it now and think that perhaps he gave us information in a way that was too black-and-white... or at least, now, I know teachers and students and even I might dare to disagree with what he said. But then, we accepted it as absolute truth, I think because we needed something to hold onto in this crazy world we were entering. I still remember talking about the four genres of a play (comedy, tragedy, melodrama, and farce), and different styles of theater (naturalism, selected realism, romanticism, expressionism, absurdism, theatricalism, formalism). I found those notes a while ago and thought, "Wait... WHO TEACHES FORMALISM IN HIGH SCHOOL?!?" Dr. Fenn. He told us that the goals of theater were to entertain, communicate, and educate, and we wrote those down and put that as an answer on tests. I don't think I know anyone else who has the guts to state, "This is what the goals of theater are," without saying, "in my opinion" or "for me" or anything like that.

At first, I was intimidated by Dr. Fenn. I was a musical theater major, which meant he wasn't my department head and I hadn't had much interaction with him my first semester. That second semester, though, in addition to that class, I was in the production of Our Town he was directing (Baseball Player Number 2). I was totally afraid of him, the severe-looking old man who puttered around the school humming. ("As Time Goes By". Always, always, always "As Time Goes By".) Early on in Foundations, Dr. Fenn was talking about drive, and how important drive was. I think there was a Sophia Loren quote involved. And suddenly, he said, "One person who I've noticed has a lot of drive is Colleen." He proceeded to describe my drive to the class, to me. I'd never thought of myself as particularly driven or passionate, I thought everyone felt the same way I did about theater... and Dr. Fenn hadn't known me for that long and was already commenting on my drive? And I will say it was that moment where I started to have the courage to follow that love.

I found out soon enough that Dr. Fenn was not nearly as severe as I thought he was. Secretly, he was eight years old. He wore a princess crown with the rest of my Playwrighting/Directing class as we cast our one acts. He has been known to say, "COOOOOOOOKIE!" Once, he very seriously stood before an audience of people and said, "One of the greatest human fears is the fear of looking stupid in front of others." He took a pause and then said, "OOOOGHABAGHOEAAGREGAAAA!", shaking his arms all over the place. He then composed himself and continued with, "Now that we've got that out of the way..."

Dr. Fenn retired a year after I left ARGS. Secretly, Becker and a bunch of students and alumni planned a surprise Dr. Fenn tribute at that year's International Thespian Society awards ceremony. Becker emailed me, asking if I would compile/direct a reading of selections of plays that Dr. Fenn directed while at ARGS. Fresh out of PHTS first year I said, "Of course!" There were selections from Spoon River Anthology, Tartuffe, Twelfth Night, Arms and the Man, Our Town, A Raisin in the Sun, and Member of the Wedding. We put it together quickly, with alumni reading, and during the performance, a surprised Dr. Fenn sat in the back, chuckling at jokes only he understands. He came up to me afterwards and gave me a huge hug, and said, "Those were some good plays, weren't they?" His love for plays is so strong, so apparent in everything he does as a theater artist and teacher, and I think actually is one of the reasons I'm such a text-based director. Almost every time I've gotten feedback on anything I'm involved in, particularly as a director, someone says, "I heard the text so clearly," and I think part of that is actually Dr. Fenn's influence on me. His love for plays is infectious.

The last time I got an email from him, he was pleased at how well things were going for me and ended his email by saying that part of the reason they were going so well was because I "never lose sight of the great goals of theater, which are to entertain, communicate, and educate." As if those three words had not been the mantra for four years of high school. He never let us lose sight of them, and even now, even being away from Dr. Fenn's teaching both in space and time, even now when I healthily challenge things that are stated as absolute fact... I must admit that I agree with him. I know plenty of people who would disagree with them, particularly on the "entertain" bit, but thinking about it... I think that's it.

One of Dr. Fenn's traditions was the 11 o'clock number. This was the "don't tell the freshmen, let them be surprised" thing of the drama department. During the (very boring) school awards ceremony, at the point where the audience started getting restless, Dr. Fenn would dance. Ridiculously. Ballet. Irish step dance. Hip-hop. Just to have fun and wake us up. Once Becker came onto staff, they would have a dance-off. Becker has an undergraduate degree in Ballet. Dr. Fenn always won.

The final 11 o'clock number was caught on tape. Dr. Fenn milked the audience, and Becker pays tribute. Then Dr. Fenn plays with Becker's arm? I don't know what that's about.

Title of the entry from a senior tribute from my year, mostly to Dr. Fenn. That section was called, "Fenn's bringin' sexy back."