Something magical happens each week.
At 4:00pm on Thursday evening, a transformation takes place. I pack up my laptop, gather my things, and leave my office in the Lindquist Center. I cross the Iowa River and make my way to the Theatre Building.
I shed the skin of an administrator and become a theatre professor.
***
I would be the kind of theatre professor who spells it theatre professor. I imagine wild, unkempt hair. A disheveled appearance. The ever-present-threat that I could do anything and anything might happen. Is that whiskey on my breath? There is no way to know. Ultimately, there is nothing predictable about the kind of theatre professor I might become.
I probably wouldn’t drink whiskey. I hardly drink at all these days. It just makes me tired.
On Thursday nights this fall, I teach a class on the second floor of the Theatre Building on the West Bank of the University of Iowa. Drama and Education is a class about, well, drama and education. Before class, I stand outside the classroom, and look out a window of walls at the Iowa River. I watch the sunset over campus. What a gorgeous view.
I’ve used improv and playbuilding to create an experience where college students think about and practice teaching, learning, and transformation with me. It’s a beautiful course. The students are beautiful people and I’m a beautiful teacher. Good writers never use the adjective beautiful three times in a row. Beautiful writers sometimes do.
I’m actually writing this in the lobby of the Theatre Building. I got to class a little early. I’m checking emails in the glow of the setting sun, with a view of the leaves changing along the Iowa River.
It’s a beautiful Thursday evening here in Iowa City.
***
Of course I’m not actually a theatre professor. I am but a humble professor of English Education, serving as chair of a large, unruly, and beautiful department.
At my heart, I’m a teacher. I don’t get to teach as much these days. I don’t always miss the wall-to-wall chaos of being a high school teacher. But sometimes I do. The relationships, the community, and the space to be alongside young people as they become less-young people is, well, beautiful.
My Thursday night class reminds me my Drama Workshop classes at Roseville High School. I work with young people to tell and interpret stories, think hard about the moment we find ourselves in, and create art to make sense of our worlds. This is important, beautiful work.
I really don’t use the word beautiful that often. And yet it is littered all over this page. So be it. I’m not in control here and, the truth is, neither are you.
That’s part of what I’m up to as a theatre professor this semester. I’m teaching us that we’re not in control and we’re learning to be okay with that. This is as important a lesson as there is to learn.
A beautiful, fucking miserable, and wonderful lesson.
A beautiful, not-fucking-miserable, and wonderful theatre professor.
