One of the plays I selected for the small Southwestern stage was the daring, seldom performed Mrs. McThing, which is a comedy by Mary Chase, author of Harvey. This play was written expressly to be performed for children for a limited engagement with Helen Hayes in the leading female role. To everyone’s surprise, the play appealed to the ‘child’ in everyone in the audience, and it moved directly to Broadway, where it enjoyed a successful run. Its difficult scene changes are very demanding. Also the leading roles are exceedingly challenging, as are all the whimsical parts. Mike Yonts, short with curly hair, played the dual role of a bratty boy and the “stick” (robotic android) with perfect manners, which a witch put in his place. I thought it was great fun to see the farce unroll. The real child was placed with a gang of chaotic (Three Stooges?) crooks who were portrayed, as were all the characters, as if a child might just have ‘made them up.’
At one performance of this play Mrs. Nay entered with a small group of family and friends and took a conspicuous seat near the front. Not only did they not stay for the entire performance but waited through the intermission until all had returned to their places before getting up and parading out as if offended somehow by the play. I’m sure she had no idea how my hard-working actors and their families would take this slight. At first in class she told them that she felt it was a really dumb play. I believe they knew there was no “child” inside their teacher for the play to speak warmly to. Then, when she realized how deeply they were offended, she explained that there had been a crisis in her family.
Just before having tryouts for my second “senior” play, I had asked her—she was the senior class sponsor—if I should give the bills for expenses incurred to the class treasurer or directly to her. Her curt reply had been, “There’ll be no bills!”
“I beg your pardon?”
“There’ll be no bills. How much money did you make on your last play?”
“Mr. Wade made it clear to me that money was not to be the object. There hadn’t been a play for three years, and he wanted me to deliver a play. Uh… we made $200.” (I’ll touch upon that play later.)
“Well, I never directed a play that made less than $300!”
I think I am rarely rude to anyone, but I’m afraid I was rude to her then. “Do you want to direct this play?” I shot at her as I walked straight toward the principal’s office. Young principal Bob Yoder looked askance at me when I told him I could not work with that woman.
“But, Jack…. What are you going to do?”
“Well, I’d like to start a drama club, open to students in all four grades, to do one play and one musical each year.”
“Let’s do it.” And we did. No principal could ever have been more supportive!
I was always aware when I attended high school plays at other schools that there could be someone in the audience who would recognize me, and thus, my actions and reactions would reflect on my school as well as myself. And I never NEVER left in the middle of a performance, however bad it might be, especially when I had students with me who had done the same show very well and wished to leave . Now that courtesy did not extend to movies and professional theater.
Let me hasten to add a word of praise, however. The woman who sometimes gave me misery had dedicated her life to that school and its students. I was there for five years and left because I felt my “mission” at the school that required a 45-minute drive each morning and evening (I fully anticipated dying on twisted, narrow Highway 9 some exhausted midnight) had ended and opportunity awaited two minutes from my home. There is certainly something positive to be said for those teachers who have absolute rule in their classrooms. There is a learning atmosphere for the gifted in those rooms—it just never worked for me as a student. Inside my head there was a roar of protest that drowned out much of their instruction, and I had to make up for that on my own outside the classroom. I truly believe that a great school should have representatives of both types of instruction areas, warm and cool. Students need to learn coping skills!
