Reason # 10 The Soul Crushing Certainty of Uncertainty: Janus Masks Have Two Sides, Here Is The Tragedy

 16 October 2020

          I am in a district that has made the following Covid choice: to stay remote until 14 October, which changed last week and is now 23 October, still remote but now in the building. The daily schedule was eviscerated and replaced by 20 day sessions. This means I teach an entire semester in 20 days, online, in three hour blocks. Do you need a minute to wrap your head around that? Go ahead, take a moment for yourself. The district is set to go hybrid beginning the 20th, but our building is holding back electives and keeping them remote. I've started calling us "ejectives", based on a text autocorrect, because we are ejectable. At any time, you can just punt an elective out of the curriculum, nobody cares. Ejectives.

        Teaching theatre remotely from an empty stage is like sitting on a grave. And sitting on a grave evokes Hamlet. The inability to act. The certainty of uncertainty. His proclivity to over thinking is what brought him down. I'm watching school districts spin and spit and suffer the slings and arrows of uncertainty. The entirety of Hamlet, audiences are flummoxed as to why he doesn't just kill Claudius already. His mind will not allow it. There are too many obstacles and outcomes to perceive and plunder and contemplate. Of course, pretending to be crazy was a great idea, ask Ophelia how that worked out. That's the only thing the guy could decide on: acting crazy. So he acted crazy and spun inside his own head until he murdered his friends, stabbed the old man, caused a suicide and eventually, finally, five acts later killed Claudius. As we all know from the CliffsNotes we read in college and the Mel Gibson movie we sort of watched, Hamlet does say he will put on an "antic disposition", but the meter is broken, indicating a man with a broken mind, yet he does make complete sense when he answers "Where is Polonius?" with "At dinner...not where he eats, but where he is eaten." Clearly not stable, but possibly driven to instability by the insane circumstances surrounding him, and the power hungry Claudius. and the pending invasion by Fortinbras. and the angry Laertes, and by the way Ophelia's dead and the gravedigger is making sense...

     Teaching theatre remotely from an empty stage is like sitting on a grave. The faces in Brady Bunch boxes are just ghosts, floating in and out from home as they feel engaged or not, popping from camera to photo. They are Yorick, alas, from a previous life, returning to remind me that at one time there was playing on this stage. I blast musicals and sing at the top of my lungs and the bottom of my belt to no one, attempting to awaken the theatre ghosts, hoping they'll keep me company. Nobody even comes to see if I'm here. Or alive. Nothing happens, nobody comes. I look at other districts, or even buildings in my own district, and they are functioning in performing arts. It's not great, they stand in marked boxes ten feet apart on stage and there are no theatre games that engage or acting exercises that push students to proclaim "Fuck you, Stanislavsky!", nothing that can be experienced to light a fire of passion, but they're there, at least they're present. I envy them. Once a week I travel to another district, south, and teach in person at at performing arts academy that is still open and functioning and doing shows, and I wonder just how crazy I'd be if I didn't have that. I think we're the only dark district. I hear there are other schools where they're managing to rehearse and hold classes. Many have ceased reporting their Covid positive cases, and up north a district is preparing to open full on in person on the 20th.They've openly said that if you want to know their Covid cases, call the district, they won't be sharing that information. 

   I'd be fine doing all of this remotely if the student population was adequately prepared for college level history and lit theatre, but they are not. Three of my classes are freshmen. The others are victims of a shattered department that has seen more loss than should be allowed a high school. But I'm doing it, and those who stay are learning. 

    How is making me teach remotely from the building beneficial to my students? Hello?

    I'm waiting.

    As long as we've stopped here, I'm switching from Elizabethan theatre to Absurdism.

    It isn't. It makes no difference if I teach from home or school or the moon, it makes no difference to the students. Shall we talk about the difference it's making to my mental health?

   Teaching theatre remotely from an empty sage is like sitting on a grave.

   The ghost of Ophelia appears beside me, she's brought a ficus. She slaps it on the stage between us and says "Like my tree?" She begins a monologue about the difficulty of reinventing yourself when what you were told you were is no longer relevant or realistic. She takes a moment to check in with me, as I'm clearly only half listening, and says "Because I was supposed to marry Hamlet, you get me? I was also female in a patriarchal society which rendered me to the status of chattel. Or property. Carrot?" She offers me a turnip and continues, as I phase her out. First her voice, then her physical being die out-she died twice,  like Buffy-and I sit on the empty stage again...

   My older colleagues are retiring. My young colleagues are looking to get out of education altogether. I have no such options, I have to stay at least five more years to make retirement even relevant, and I am too old to be of use to anyone else. Ageism is real. I am trapped on an empty stage, alone. Where'd that ficus go? I walk a circle and listen to the same song on repeat. Polonius tries to emerge, but his will is not strong enough through age and death and five hundred years and my own disinterest in hearing him talk any more, even if we are trapped and I am alone. If he says "To thine own self be true" I may just lose it.

    I've never felt so old, so useless, so used up. So used. Who Cares? 

    Nobody Cares.

    Nothing happens, nobody comes. The rest is silence.

     And so, I sit in the graveyard and play music from a dead era and reimagine theatre education for the Brady Bunch cubes. 

    I'm waiting.

     Scene

Teachers As Losers

   I feel like, I cannot be any more...angry, sad, confused, frustrated.

   And then I see a post with Trump Jr...

   He called teachers losers who "indocrtincate socialism from a young age."

   As I am, in fact, a teacher, this came as shocking news to me.

   Mr. Junior, I wonder what school did you attend? I bet I could argue that you were indoctrinated with privilege there at the Hill School, founded by a Reverend, Greed, at least Capitalism and maybe a little entitlement. Private schools are notorious hot beds of conservative indoctrination by loser teachers who have consumed the Kool Aid and are being paid peanuts by the rich to teach their little, entitled brats. I mean, aren't all teachers losers by this definition? Foolish enough to give up time with their families to educate those whose families can't be bothered with them? I see The Hill was also a boarding school. Bet your dad was down there every weekend to visit you, wasn't he?

   I infered from your spoken words behind a microphone, that teachers are losers for indoctrinating socialism to children from a young age. But clearly, you are exempt from this indoctrination, as you are not referring to your private school teachers. Based on your vocation, I would assume that you are not a fan of socialism, but of capitalism. Yet you do not blame your teachers at The Hill for indoctrinating you to capitalism. That must mean you refer to the rest of us, those losers in public education, who are indoctrinating our youth to socialism.

   I don't disagree with you, Mr. Junior. I have frequently thought that I am quite a loser, giving so much of my time and energy to my students, many of whom do not possess your privelege. In fact, I am such a loser, I buy groceries for my classroom so these kids can have lunch. I suppose that is a form of  indoctrinating socialism, isn't it? Giving something I paid for to those who cannot afford it. I have a former collegue who is even a bigger loser than I am, as she feeds over 700 families in need at Thanksgiving. Right? What a clown, who does that? She's a pretty big loser who is clearly indoctrinating socialism to her students.

   So, I started this blog as a grumpy person, but I am finishing feeling much better. You are right to call us all out, sir, we are losers, working for peanuts to educate the children of American. And we are indoctrinating socialism by feeding our kids and funding our classrooms with our own money, when clearly, if a student cannot afford a notebook they should simply go without. What kind of a loser buys that kid a notebook? If he wanted to go to school and learn, he'd buy a notebook, right? Screw him. No notebook, no school. Who buys that loser a notebook? Public school teachers do, sir, we, the collective Losers Of The World.

  Thank  you for clarifying this for me, Mr. Junior. 

When They Find Me I Will Be...

   This is a writing prompt stolen from Jovan Mays. He gives about ten prompts for kids to start writing their stories, and this one stuck with me. I've used it repeatedly. I like it becasue the answer is different every time. Depending on your state of mind or situation, it's hopeful  or dark. But even the dark becomes hopeful, because it's a prompt and I make them write at least three sentences, avoiding "When they find me I will be dead", or "When they find me I'll be with my dog." I need more guys, so do you.

  So in my upper level class, we're working towards writing original monologues. I gave them several prompts, and they shut down. So we focused on this one. To help them along, I also wrote, I didn't realize this image was in me, but it's delightful so I'm sharing. My response:

   When they find me, I will be struggling to balance the salad I just bought at the bodega with the ceramic 1970's lamp I found at the Goodwill so that I can open the lobby door. It's an easier door to open than the stage door, where the giant beast key tends to stick. All of my treasures would end up on the ground if I came in that way. The front door is tended to more frequently and opens easily as the house crew needs to be able to get in without any glitches. I usually come through the stage door, so they have to unlock it themsleves, even though they can see me in the lobby, I tend not to unlock that door. I will enter the dark lobby and walk, in the dark, to the box office where I'll leave the lamp and the salad. I will continue in the dark to the house, as per my ritual, and bellow "Mom's home, party's over". I will stand and laugh at my own joke, yet I will wait ten seconds before turning on the house lights so the ghosts have time to clear the stage. As I turn back to the lobby, I will trip over them, they, the one who found me, and ask why were they looking? I am not lost. I did not go missing. I am exactly where everyone expected me to be. They will smile and shrug, and as far as I am concerned, they are dismissed. However, they stay, hovering, as I go about my tasks to warm up the space. Since I now have an audience, I feel compelled to narrate.

          "The SM will be here in ten minutes, but they already do everything, and I think it's nice for                   me to come in first and warm everything up and start the coffee. Well, nice or control freak,                   either one, I'll take either one, it's my theatre, my responsiblity, my home, my church. I want to              be here. It's not a job, it's a choice."

That was my response to the prompt  yesterday. It's complelely different than any response I have written in the last two years, all of which revolve around the shit storm of 2016-2020. It's nice to see that shaken loose, to know that on an unconscious level, at least, I've let it go.

   ANYWAY, it's cool. And a great prompt and you may wish to try it. I find it to be good for my mental health, and, as it turns out, also revealing.

   Scene.