As far as I do know, outdoors of her doctoral dissertation, Maureen by no means registered her ideas on theatre in a e-book or monograph. So, by sharing her classes right here on HowlRound, I settle her ideas into timelessness alongside the craft of theatre.
Maureen’s demise was a zig—we not have her. This essay is a zag—her classes will reside on by means of you, HowlRound readers.
So, right here we go:
1. The Potential of the Expressive Arts
The first lesson that Maureen taught was that heightened tales, lives, and circumstances are attainable by means of the instruments of symbolism, naturalism, and poetry. Such is the potential of the expressive arts, therefore the relevance of theatre colleges.
2. Eulogies, Obituaries, and Plays are Conversations
The second lesson is one which Maureen taught me after her beautiful tribute to the beloved Emerson director, instructor, and division chair Bob Colby: Eulogies are conversations and so, if I really feel nervous, flummoxed, or misplaced in my memorializing, I simply must settle into this dialog we’re having collectively in regards to the love for Maureen.
This second lesson not solely applies to eulogies, after all. Plays are additionally conversations.
3. The Theatre is a Meeting House
The theatre is a gathering home for dialog. That was a 3rd lesson Maureen taught me.
She cleverly engaged the time period “meeting house” intentionally after I used to be employed to show theatre at a Quaker college.
Even in gold-leaf cathedrals of theatre like Broadway homes or the Cutler Majestic, what makes this theatre reverent and related is that it’s a palace for assembly; assembly your self, concepts, hopes, and—most prerequisite-ly—one another. Theatre is about all of the life round us—this, Maureen insisted on.
4. Give Characters the Dignity of Being Real
The fourth lesson Maureen taught me is that as a result of the theatre is a gathering home, we should at all times give characters “the dignity of being real.” Poetic humanism—or humanism as poetry—made Maureen an excellent director and a spirit-led instructor.
“I want people in a room, not actors on a stage,” she would say. Theatre as dialog shouldn’t be a method of simplifying the making of theatre, however it’s a deeper calling that requires extra listening from us artists.
Maureen demanded this kind of deep listening and consciousness once we collaborated—and he or she taught it into us so we might use it as a set level of reality as soon as we left Emerson’s boutique sq. block in Boston. Before we have now something to say, we should hearken to the world round us.
Mentorship is our craft’s agnostic theology of mental and artistic reincarnation.
5. Sentimentality and Self-Consciousness are the Enemies of all Art
A fifth lesson I realized when Maureen was my director in Horton Foote’s wistful reminiscence play, The Actor at Emerson. As a second-year student-actor, I used to be scared of the titular function’s vulnerability. “Fear is the primary component of any actor’s life,” Maureen would counsel. “Casting is a vote of confidence,” she would guarantee.
“I’m here for you, I will catch you,” she stated, “but you have to jump off the edge. Sentimentality and self-consciousness are the enemies of all art.”
“By being in the room, you’re telling me you want to do it, so do it,” she would say with an intonation that was concurrently confrontational like a mob boss and charming like Jiminy Cricket.
6. Cherish the Gift of Uncushioned Honesty
Sixth, Maureen supplied a invaluable useful resource to Emerson—an more and more uncommon useful resource that’s essential for any theatre college: trustworthy critiques.
As larger training is more and more scrutinized, sanitized, and branded, Maureen was unabashed and courageous in providing her evaluation of the longitude and latitude of a pupil. She was unintimidated in giving the present of uncushioned honesty. This tendency was all of the extra radical as she operated in historically male-dominated areas.
Maureen’s gusto was a present. Her antennae for casting have been by no means cliche, established order, or secure: she had an affinity for sniffing out the potential of misfits, wallflowers, wounded warriors, backbenchers, and enigmas. Those who navigated her honesty walked away as extra succesful and extra assured.
7. Work on a Play like a Potter
Seventh, Maureen taught me to work on a play like a potter works on a wheel. Charge, carve, pound, push, and wrestle the play as one would earthy clay.
Get it below fingernails, slap it, pinch it up, crush it down, cradle it, throw it on the desk, and finesse its traces. Plays will not be delicate ships in a bottle; they’re supplies of mud and dust as a result of they’re issues of people.
Plays are containers of power and area. The extra one fights, dances, and submits to the play, the extra power it’ll comprise.
Plays will not be delicate ships in a bottle; they’re supplies of mud and dust as a result of they’re issues of people.
8. Maintain Absurdity and Silliness
An eighth lesson was that though performs are poems and theatres are assembly homes, the seriousness of a theatre artist ought to by no means get rid of one’s capability to be absurd, mischievous, or depraved.
Maureen taught us to pivot between intense artistic flows of extremely caffeinated focus to boisterous, giddy, goofy guffaws.
I recall when Maureen taught the Emerson firm of The Grapes of Wrath to sing a profane shanty of complaints throughout a very lengthy tech maintain. Imagine it: in a thrust theatre, an ensemble of school actors singing, in concord, profanity after profanity within the spherical. It was sardonic, offensive, unprofessional, and oh-so pleasant.
9. Fried Clams are Gross
A ninth lesson Maureen taught me is that I can’t abdomen fried clams. She was excited to take me to one in every of her favourite bayside shacks to eat them. I turned inexperienced and, to this present day, even the considered them provides me the heebie-jeebies. Although I discovered the fried clams to be abhorrent, taking me, a mentee, to share a significant meal was an act of hospitality and vulnerability. With meals, Maureen taught us to converse through communion.
10. We Carry Our Iterations in Interactions
A tenth lesson is that my dad and mom and godparents beloved Maureen Shea. She acquired dinner with them on the Malaysian restaurant one block over. Maureen described my household as “wonderfully eccentric and yet so normal,” and I agree with that description.
My dad, an introvert by disposition, flowered in Maureen’s presence. My godmothers, each queer elders, have been enchanted by a singular camaraderie.
The lesson right here is that we supply our iterations in all our interactions. The identical factor that made me comfy round Maureen is what made my household comfy round her too.