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You are here: Home / Archives for teaching

Coaching, Former Students, Cleaning up the Garden

April 20, 2023 at 8:47 am by Claudia

Found this crabapple by The Dude on the edge of the Secret Garden. This is my favorite kind of crabapple because of those pink buds. It’s just like the one that was cut down by that idiot last spring. I miss that tree so much, but seeing this yesterday helped a bit.

Well, I’m done with the show. I drove to New Jersey, checked into the motel, checked out of the hotel, took notes at the show, and drove home late Tuesday night, getting home at 12:15 am. Too long a story as to why I decided to check out, but I’m glad I did. The show is in pretty good shape, needs a bit of tightening. The actors are doing well with the dialects, save for a few mistakes here and there.

One of the nicest things to happen on Tuesday was reconnecting with a former student from Boston University who works for the Paper Mill Playhouse as Production Manager. He came up to me and surprised me, and my goodness, it’s so wonderful to see former students again and find them happy and working in the theater. Mike lives with his wife and two kids fairly close to the theater. Confession: I’m always wondering if students from that time in my life are shocked at how much I’ve aged, my gray hair, etc. I’m always slightly embarrassed and then, because I’m insecure, I make jokes about it.

Speaking of former students, I posted this recently on Instagram:

Both Maura West and Cynthia Watros were students of mine at Boston University. And both have them have been working on soap operas for years. They are terrific actresses and human beings. Recently, Maura wrote me to tell me that she and Cynthia were on set one day and were reciting a monologue I assigned to them years ago. It’s from The Caretaker  by Harold Pinter and I used it as tool to learn the Cockney dialect. 30+ years later, they both remembered every word! Maura said “We remembered and laughed together with such love for our memories of you!!”

Oh my. That fills my heart, it really does.

She also added that she’ll probably be ‘blathering it (the monologue) in the nursing home!” I get it, Maura. I still remember every word as well!

I worked outside yesterday, but I got tired fairly quickly. I’m just now coming out of that upper respiratory thing, and I was tired from my trip to NJ. Plus, every year at the beginning of gardening season, I realize I’m out of shape. I did clear a chunk of the big garden bed, annoying the robin who is adding to the nest on the shed as I traveled back and forth with a wheelbarrow.

It was also very windy. I wore a mask and sunglasses, but the pollen got to me. And my back, of course. Today, I think I’m going to go to the nursery and hope they still have pansies left. I’m about a week behind on everything around here.

Glad to be coming out of that dreadful illness. Glad to be home. Glad to finally start working outside. Grateful to have had employment.

Stay safe.

Happy Thursday.

Filed Under: coaching, flowers, friends, garden, teaching 18 Comments

Day Four Hundred Thirteen

April 30, 2021 at 10:27 am by Claudia

I glanced behind me while sitting on the Funky Patio and saw something white. Investigating further, I realized it was a daffodil! A little miracle that popped out of the gravel by the porch. I’m so glad I didn’t yank it, thinking it was a weed.

These little wonders are everything.

Wind. It woke me up last night. It’s going on all day today. I moved all my pots to areas on the porch that, hopefully, will shelter them a bit. In the meantime, I’ll try not to scream too much.

________________________

Back to the story of my career:

A dusty framed photo of yours truly in my office at Boston University. The longtime faculty of the School of the Arts had the offices with windows. Mine was windowless. Nevertheless, I loved it. A wonderful voice teacher from the School of Music had the office directly across the hall from me, and I had the pleasure of hearing him sing as well as his students. Richard Cassilly was his name. He was an operatic tenor who had had a long career singing opera all over the world, including La Scala, the Vienna State Opera, the Metropolitan Opera, and the Royal Opera in London. He was a kind man and a gentleman. The wonderful thing about BU’s School for the Arts at that time was the fact that theater, music, and art all shared the same building. How can that be anything but exciting and stimulating? The Dean of the School for the Arts was famed American opera singer, Phyllis Curtin, who I was honored to call my colleague and friend. She was beautiful, elegant, funny, and wise.

Note in photo: My dark hair, which you rarely see here on the blog, my cheekbones, which I used to have in abundance, a desk phone (no personal computers yet, no cell phones), and my Filofax! I remain a planner addict to this day.

I’ve said before that my favorite time in my career was the five years I taught at Boston University. I don’t think I’ve ever been as stimulated. I felt good about myself (my peak years – I think – were my thirties and early forties) I loved the students, I worked constantly, and I loved living in my rent controlled apartment in Cambridge. I didn’t have a car, so I took the “T” everywhere and I walked and walked and walked, just as I had in Philadelphia. I loved nothing more than exploring neighborhoods, visiting historic sites, people watching. I lived just down the street from Harvard. In fact, I lived on Harvard Street.

If I was earning more than I was, I would have stayed, because I was perfectly happy there. There was nothing I didn’t like – except being relatively poor.

Two things happened that made me start to think about leaving. My brother, who had been fighting lymphoma since the tail end of my time in Philadelphia, grew worse. Right after I returned from chaperoning our students on a trip to the Edinburgh Festival (where they performed two plays by BU alum, Craig Lucas,) my mom called me. She had held off telling me that Dave was critically ill because she didn’t want to ruin my trip. Within a week of my return, Dave passed away. This was in  September of 1991. I won’t go into details but Dave’s death at the age of 44 was devastating. It still is. My students were incredibly loving and supportive when I returned from Michigan. They literally wrapped their arms around me. Then, the next year, I turned 40. Decade birthdays have always been hard for me, but ultimately positive. My 30th birthday generated some self-reflection that led to me auditioning for grad school. My 40th led to me saying out loud that it was perhaps time to move on to a job that paid better. My wish list was this: a teaching position in an MFA, rather than BFA, program and one that was affiliated with a major regional theater. BU was affiliated at that time with the Huntington Theater (which was in residence at BU’s theater space near Symphony Hall.) I had coached there several times and was starting to amass a lot of professional credits, in addition to all the productions (at least a hundred) that I had coached at BU. I worked with many well-known actors there, some of whom I worked with again years later. My professional world was expanding.

Dave would have urged me to take a chance.

I said it out loud. I owned it.

Rick, who was my colleague at BU and had become a good friend, was also thinking of moving on and we talked about what we wanted in our next positions, wherever they might be.

These conversations led, in a strangely wonderful way, to my next job. More later.

Rest in Peace, Johnny Crawford, of The Rifleman fame. I loved that show and I loved him. I got to meet him several years ago at the Old Globe Gala. He had his own orchestra and they supplied the music. I was star struck and he was awfully nice to me.

Stay safe.

Happy Friday.

Filed Under: Boston, Dave, flowers, teaching 26 Comments

Day Four Hundred Three

April 20, 2021 at 10:37 am by Claudia

First up:

We tag-team mowed our massive front yard yesterday for the first time this year. We did a high-five and were proud of ourselves. Then, by the evening, we were frigging exhausted. And my allergies went haywire. The first mow is always the hardest and, eventually, it will be much easier. As will my allergies.

Started a new puzzle, but I was so stuffed up and tired after mowing that I didn’t get very far.

Today, we’re taking it easy.

_____________________________

I’m sharing more today about my career. First, a clarification. My decision to teach was also based on the realization that after acting since I was 10 – that would be for 23 years – I no longer had any desire to act. I was done. Ironic, since I had just been granted an MFA in Acting. But without that degree, nothing that happened later would have happened. So, going back to grad school changed my life. It was a bold move for someone like me. I’d stayed in Michigan. I was cautious. At the time, I was not someone who could just pick up and move someplace far away. I had ties to my family, I watched out for my sisters, I had a support group of friends and family. But staying there, I realized when I turned 30, would have been lethal for me. I was stuck working in a job that I didn’t like to support myself. I worked 40 hours a week and spent another 25 rehearsing for various productions. I hated doing something I had absolutely no interest in. I had dear friends who knew me well and urged me to make a change. I knew that the way to do it was to audition for a graduate program and earn a post-graduate degree (which had always been important to me.) Once I made that decision, the rest followed.

So. Three times in my life I have changed my course. Moving away to grad school. Deciding to no longer act, but to teach instead. And eventually giving up a lucrative teaching position and resident voice and dialect position with the Old Globe Theater in San Diego to move east with my husband and freelance.

But back to Boston University. That job was everything for me. I worked my ass off. I was usually gone for 12 – 15  hours a day, teaching classes during the day, attending rehearsals at night. Since it was my first teaching job, I felt like I was about 2 days ahead of my students. Every night, I wrote a lesson plan for the next day. Then I ‘sold’ it. That is what I did when I interviewed for a job – I had to teach a class and I sold it. (I can be very funny and charming.) Same with teaching. I think all of us – at times – feel like we’re fakes, pretending to be qualified when, in our heart, we feel exactly the opposite.

That entire first year, as I taught phonetics and Standard American Speech (speech for the stage that had no discernible regionalisms and a rich, full sound) and another class in dialects, I was figuring out how to teach it. I was blessed in my colleague Robert Chapline, a brilliant teacher who became my mentor. I wrote about him a few years ago when he died. He was always there for me if I had questions –  a gentle man and a gentle guide.

BU’s program was a tough one and there were cuts made after the second year. (I hated making those decisions.) But it was a BFA program and when you’re 18 and coping with all sorts of changes in addition to the demands of classwork and performance, there comes a time when you – or the faculty – realize it’s not the right fit. But the students! Lord, how I loved them. They were fiercely talented and intelligent and funny and demanding and I remain friends with many of them to this day. They brought out the best in me. I had to become good at what I do. I coached everything; mainstage shows, lab shows, projects…I never stopped.

I worked there for five years, only leaving because I was paid too little to survive long-term in Boston, which is a very expensive place to live. When Bill Lacey hired me, he hired me as a visiting assistant professor. Since they hadn’t been able to do a full-out search, I was ‘on approval’ for that first year. I was so grateful for the job that I accepted a ridiculously low salary and, though I got a raise every year, it wasn’t enough to make a huge difference. Luckily, for four out of the five years I was there, I lived in a rent controlled apartment in Cambridge. But my first year? The smallest studio I have EVER lived in – three times the rent of the rent-controlled one bedroom I eventually moved into. The size of many walk-in closets I see on Instagram.

Many of those students are working to this day. Some of them are rather big in Hollywood; Krista Vernoff, the show runner for Gray’s Anatomy and Station 19. Michael Medico, who directs for both those shows, as well as others. Cynthia Watros, Daytime Emmy Award winner for her long-running role on Guiding Light, Abraham Higginbotham, producer for Will and Grace, Ugly Betty, and Executive Producer and Writer for Modern Family and multiple Emmy winner. Peter Paige,  actor in the series Queer as Folk  and many more, and producer and creator of The Fosters. Kim Raver, actress, who has had continuing roles on countless shows; 24,  Ray Donovan, Designated Survivor and currently, Grey’s Anatomy.  Anthony Ruivivar, who works constantly – he was a regular on Third Watch and has a new series starting up right now. He’s also married to a fellow alum, Yvonne Jung. And more, of course, I just can’t remember specifics at the moment. I am still friends with them to this day.

They shaped me. They made me want to help them and be the very best I could be.

Also, while I was at BU, I started to coach in regional theater, specifically, at the Huntington Theater in Boston as well as the North Shore Music Theater. All of that experience prepared me for my next job.

More later.

Stay safe.

Happy Tuesday.

Filed Under: Boston, coaching, teaching, theater 29 Comments

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Welcome!

Welcome!

I live in a little cottage in the country with my husband. It's a sweet place, sheltered by old trees and surrounded by gardens. The inside is full of the things we love. I love to write, I love my camera, I love creating, I love gardening. My decorating style is eclectic; full of vintage and a bit of whimsy.

I've worked in the theater for more years than I can count. I'm currently a voice, speech, dialect and text coach freelancing on Broadway, off Broadway, and in regional theater.

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