by Tom Vander Well

I adore this article. I was a theatre major in college as well (and yes, I still snootily spell it with an “re” - from my time studying Shakespeare at Oxford ;). I wholeheartedly believe that it prepared me for life and all of it’s challenges. I left college understanding that anything I wanted to do, anything that would be worth taking on, would be challenging, involve the creative use of every resource at my disposal, require true genuine-presence on my part, and the ability to communicate and empathize with the wide range of characters that life puts on my path.

When I look at the work I’m doing in schools right now, it all revolves around ideas and obstacles that are central to anyone who has ever mounted a production: How do I make this happen with almost no money, not enough time, and no space? In a world that, in large part, doesn’t value what I’m doing? Furthermore, how do I do this with integrity and grace, and generate a product that has real value? Also, how do I find a way to deal with rejection and failure that allows me to learn as much as possible from any given situation but does not allow me to get so down that I just want to give up? Four years of putting on cabarets in Galbraith Hall 149 taught me much :)