Nervous. So nervous. I had just spent three and a half hours in mentor training. I sat at the lunch table chatting with friends, trying to distract myself with conversation. After lunch was my audition. I was supposed to prepare an audition piece, complete with blocking, props and a costume. I considered several options of Shakespeare monologues I could perform, but after doing a deep dive on the character of Goneril from King Lear, I decided that was the monologue I wanted to perform. Given the context, I completely understood how this oldest daughter, expecting to inherit the land and dealing with her father’s childish games, would be upset. She wasn’t exactly the cold-hearted villain I had assumed when reading King Lear with my son four years ago.
Deep breath. I shifted uncomfortably in my chair wishing I hadn’t chosen to change into my costume right after lunch. I was sporting a green and gold renaissance-style dress made of a cheap velvet material. Amazon special. This was as good as it was going to get for a costume. Holy cow. Hot. So hot. Can we just do this audition thing already? Nope. There was another activity before auditions.
Finally, the time had arrived. A girl of 16 who was training to be a student mentor offered to go first. She didn’t seem nervous and her memorization was flawless. Also, her monologue was way longer than mine. Strange. Maybe she was an overachiever. Other peers from the class got up one by one to perform their audition pieces. After watching a couple more auditions, I realized I must have misread the instructions for the assignment. I had focused so much on finding a Shakespeare monologue that I could connect to fully, that I completely missed the fact that this audition piece was supposed to be 3-5 minutes long. Part of the assignment was cutting the script down appropriately and creating the scene. Ugh! I was going to have to perform soon, which I was totally nervous about already, and now I knew it wasn’t even what I had been asked to do.
I hadn’t done much blocking of the scene to prepare because the entire monologue was Goneril talking to her father. As I watched others perform, they were pacing around and using up more of the stage. Oh man! Standing in one place pretending to speak to an invisible king on stage was starting to look like a terrible idea. I decided to move around a little more on stage during my audition. I could also try to slow my speaking pace a bit. But I knew my audition piece would still be too short. Oh well. Time to take the stage.
I performed my little heart out! I finished my audition and went to sit down, taking note with embarrassment as my mentor glanced down at her phone to see the time. “A little short,” she said. “Yes, I know. Somehow I missed the part about the length when I was focusing on finding a Shakespeare monologue to study and learn.” Aside from the time being shorter than expected, I was fairly proud of myself. One mentor gave feedback that more or less reflected what I thought I deserved. A peer mentor gave me feedback that was also somewhat anticipated. The other mentor’s comments and “scores” were not at all what I expected. “Who or what were you looking at or talking to? It was confusing.” Ugh! Yes. Peer pressure. I would have been better off just staring at my pretend King Lear than trying to do what everyone else had done on stage. And my costume got 7/10? What the heck was I supposed to do for a costume? Become a seamstress? Geez! Also, feedback on the lack of emotion in my performance was confusing. Goneril was supposed to be upset in the scene (both sad and mad). I’m pretty sure the tears welling up in my eyes and the anger in my voice construed an angry and upset oldest daughter who was embarrassed and ashamed of her father and his childish behavior, clear favoritism of another daughter, and plans for dividing the kingdom she had always assumed she would inherit through birthright. Sigh. There was little time to reflect at that moment. However, I later realized the brilliance of having us perform an audition piece just like our scholars would do on the first day of class. I caught a glimpse of what the scholars could potentially experience during their audition on the first day of class: fear, excitement, anxiety, stress, contentment, confidence, confusion, comparison, disappointment, embarrassment, relief. I felt grateful to have a better understanding of what these teens might be feeling when they audition in the fall.
That’s the nature of LEMI training. It’s a simulation. The idea is to put the soon-to-be mentors through a mini version of the class - in three days we experience much of what the scholars will experience the coming year. Not only do we learn a lot about the subject material we will be teaching. We also gain a first-hand perspective on what it will feel like for the students taking our class.
I was a mentor in Georgics last year. Our papers were a little longer and we read more books because our scholars were a little older (14-16). But there was still a lot of incentive built into our class through means of an end-of-year retreat to encourage the scholars to complete all their assignments.
This was different. I was training for classical acting, an apprentice scholar class. It’s a time when scholars are likely between 14-16 years old and ready to submit to a mentor, study more, redo papers, take on more responsibility, and strive for excellence. This training really helped me understand the difference between being a practice scholar and an apprentice scholar. It is a time to do hard work just for the sake of doing it. And to experience the ups and downs that come with trusting a mentor to guide us through our learning and growth.
We read books and plays and prepared discussion questions. We wrote papers. We also had to give a performance of our choice in front of the class. We were given the performance as homework on Thursday night and prepared to perform on Friday morning. It threw us all off when we learned that there was no time for our performances on day 2 and the performances would need to be pushed to day 3. It was disappointing and a little nerve-racking for all of us to have the date changed at the last minute. We had planned and prepared. But there was simply not enough time. We would have to wait. When the time finally came for performances, we were told we had 1-2 minutes to perform. We had been told to prepare performances that were 3-5 minutes long on Thursday night when we left our class with homework to complete. We all scrambled to somehow cut down our performances to half the length we had prepared and practiced.
Flashback to fall 2024. My daughter, who was taking classical acting, came home from school and seemed kind of down. I asked her about her day. She had chosen clogging for her performance. Since each of her individual clogging routines were only 1-1.5 minutes long, she made a music mix to kind of tie them all together and create a performance that was 10 minutes long. One of her classmates took much longer than the 10-15 minutes assigned, trying to fit in a fun game for the class to play. They were running behind schedule so my daughter’s performance was cut short. She was so bummed! I totally get it now. It’s hard to prepare well and then not get to perform the way you had planned. It’s like I understood on a whole other level what my daughter had gone through the previous year. It was nobody’s fault really, but she had prepared and was excited to perform in front of her class and then her time was cut short. Our whole class experienced something similar during training.
Friday afternoon we began preparations for the most stressful part of classical acting training. We had to take a Shakespeare play and turn it into a 10 minute process drama that we would perform in front of all the other classes of mentors the following afternoon. We all read Othello to prepare for colloquium in class. We also read Macbeth. We were told that our process drama would be on Macbeth. Apparently it was a mistake the mentor had made when assigning us homework. We had all read TWO Shakespeare plays instead of one to prepare for training, in addition to reading Oedipus Rex for another part of training. It was a lot. I was slightly frustrated realizing I had put in more time than had been needed and prepared scenes and questions for the wrong play. Then I paused and smiled to myself. Yep! Sometimes mentors make mistakes. That’s also part of the process. We all found a little Dove chocolate on our desk the following morning as a peace offering for completing extra work we didn’t really need to do. 🙂
It was now time to brainstorm ideas for our process drama. All of us thought we would be performing Macbeth, but we could likely take our ideas for a possible setting and use them with the play Othello. I had come prepared with a couple of solid ideas to contribute, but I didn’t really care what we ended up deciding. I figured it would somehow turn out great no matter what setting we chose. This felt like the easiest part of the homework so far. Brainstorming possible settings for our play.
And then the unimaginable happened. My mentor turned to me and asked if I would be the director. My stomach dropped. Are you kidding me? I was prepared to help with costumes or props or maybe, just maybe, be a writer. But there was ZERO part of me that had considered I would be asked to be the director.
Most of the women in my class have directed multiple Shakespeare plays. One lady has been teaching Shakespeare for 15 years. Oh. My. Gosh. This cannot be happening.
Classical acting is not community theater. There are many scholars I know who are involved in theater, choir or other performance groups outside of our commonwealth school. I LOVE theater and I LOVE watching students perform! I would go watch a performance every single night if I had the time and money. But classical acting is not community theater. It’s a LEMI project. It’s not about the play or even about the performances. It’s about the scholar - the unique, individual child of God entrusted to our care. It’s about learning and growth and creating leaders. The scholar is the project! It’s not about who has the most experience on stage or access to the best backdrops, props or costumes. What one scholar needs to experience will likely be very different from another. Maybe the scholar who always gets the lead needs to experience having a smaller role. Maybe the shy kid who struggles with speech needs more lines. Maybe the one who prefers to take a backseat needs to lead, and the one who usually leads needs to learn by having a support role. This is the brilliance of LEMI projects!
I didn’t want to be the director for our process drama. There were so many other women who were much more comfortable sitting in the director’s chair. I get a little nervous, but can hop on stage and improv when I need to. But I’ve never directed a play, cut it down to a bite-sized chunk of time, or tried to take complex themes from Shakespeare and turn it into a modern play with a completely different setting.
My mentor looked me straight in the eyes again. “Are you willing to be the director for our process drama?” Gulp. Without breaking eye contact, I simply replied, “Yes.”
And just like that I learned what it’s like to submit to a mentor.
The next 24 hours were a whirlwind of hard work, emotions and a whole lot of learning. It started with leading our class in brainstorming possible settings, voting, and making a final decision. Then on to casting. I asked for volunteers. I had one or two who had an idea of what they wanted to do. I looked at each person sitting before me, individuals I had only met a day and a half before. There was no time to ponder. I had to act. I started with Othello and paused for a moment as a name came to me. I asked each person if they were willing to play that part, and then moved onto the next character. I looked at the whiteboard and took a deep breath. The cast list was out, we had a setting, a writer, a producer, and people assigned to costumes and props.
I felt like I was standing at the base of a gigantic mountain, and I had less than 24 hours to get to the top. It was so overwhelming! Thankfully my writer was able to meet with me for about an hour and a half and get a basic draft of the play out to everyone else so they could work on props and basic costumes before stores closed that evening. Everything was going well.
And then I had to step in as a leader in a completely different way. One person who had started out as a writer but had to be switched to props due to her lack of availability that evening started adding details to the play. Before long, our simple script outline had turned into a complex play with lots of details, props and scenery. Those helping with costumes were confused and out looking for dresses, the props people thought they needed to find mirrors and flowers based on what was written in each scene. The ideas were incredible, but way too complicated for the 10 minute version of the play we had to perform in 24 hours.
What was happening? My writer was confused and a little hurt. Why had the original draft been changed so much during her commute home and time eating dinner? I had props people purchasing the wrong things, and actors trying to go shopping for clothing they hadn’t packed in their suitcase for training. I wasn’t sure what to do so I reached out to my mentor. She walked me through some choices I had as the director. “Ultimately it’s your play.” This is the part of leadership that is often not fun for me. I prefer to be the camp counselor who sits around the campfire holding hands and singing kumbayah. I don’t love conflict, and I hate the idea of hurting people’s feelings. Ugh! I thanked my mentor and took a deep breath. I sent out messages to everyone that the writer and I were going to cut down the script quite a bit more to make it more manageable, that the costumes and props would be simple like we had originally discussed, and that we would figure everything else out during our rehearsal time the next day.
The writer and I went to work. Again. We read through each act and scene of Othello, making sure we understood what was happening. Then we took the information and put it into our setting so it made sense. It was long. Way too long. We went back and cut out a ton of what we had just written. Then we cut out even more. Have you ever tried to make a 3 hour play into a 10 minute one? It’s much harder than you think!
We were up super late. I was sleep deprived and stressed. We had multiple things to get through the first half of the day that had nothing to do with the play. I understood on a whole other level what my students experience when they have performances on their mind and still have to go to another class to turn in a paper or participate in a book discussion. It was difficult to fully focus on anything besides the play. We had a much needed lunch break in the middle of the day. I sat in silence eating my food, knowing that in less than 3 hours it would all be over. Finally it was time for rehearsal! My writer handed out scripts and we started fumbling through the scenes. We had two hours until we had to perform, and no one had even read the script yet. My mentor gave me tips on how to give feedback to the actors and add or subtract from the scenes as necessary. I did my best. But I had no idea what I was doing.
We were more than halfway through rehearsal when my mentor leaned over and quietly asked me when my character would be on stage. Umm… Well… Shoot! Dang! In the massive scramble to shorten the script for the 500th time at 1:30am, I hadn’t realized that both of my scenes had been cut out of the play. The actors were barely catching onto the flow of everything and definitely didn’t have their cues and entrances memorized yet. I couldn’t think of an easy way to write myself back in without complicating it. Sigh. I was definitely at a breaking point. I could barely think and there was no time to make any big changes at this point. We had time to run through it one more time, maybe two if we were lucky.
My brain was FRIED. I was literally EXHAUSTED! I’m not exactly sure what went through my mentor’s mind when she realized I had no lines and both of my characters had inadvertently been cut out of the play. But in that moment she saw through spiritual eyes. I wasn’t trying to cut myself out of the play. I wasn’t afraid to be on stage or recite lines in front of others. Even though it wasn’t perfect, I had done enough. I had stepped up and submitted to my mentor when that was the last thing I wanted to do. I had worked side by side with my writer, managed conflict when the script was changed, stepped in and made difficult decisions, communicated with the cast, stayed up late rewriting and cutting the script down to a manageable length, tried to walk the cast through the scenes when none of them knew their parts, made notes, given feedback, rerun the scenes over and over in hopes that everyone could remember what they were supposed to do…and I had no more to give in that moment. This wasn’t the time for her to push for me to find a way to write my character back into a scene. I had done enough. I had learned enough. I had stepped up and been a leader when that’s what was asked of me.
Through the wisdom and kindness of my mentor, I learned how to be an even better mentor. Sometimes we have to look past the checklist and requirements and see through spiritual eyes. What is most needed right now? It’s not always about what will make the best play. Or how to ensure that everyone earns a reward. It’s about what is needed to help this unique individual grow the most in this moment. It’s rarely what is the easiest or most convenient for the mentor. But using spiritual eyes is what makes mentoring so powerful.
We decided that I could be part of the wedding party scene. I would dance with everyone when we came onstage for the wedding party and be in the background for the rest of the scene. It was the most we could make happen in that short amount of time.
Side note. Ten minutes after we performed, I thought of multiple lines I could have added into the scene that would have worked and totally made sense. Sigh. Of course when the stress was off I could think again. But that’s another story. And also part of the process. Sometimes we think of ways to improve things AFTER the final performance is over.
I stepped into the auditorium with the cast by my side feeling more nervous than I have been in a very long time. We had done all that we could. It was showtime! Ophelia: A Bridezilla Story was about to begin.
Our play was awesome! The cast was amazing!! It was so funny! We managed to follow the themes from Othello (a tragedy) and create a play that made sense AND made people laugh. It was a total rush! We all bowed together after the performance and then gathered for a picture. Several of my classmates told me that from the first day, they had felt drawn to me and had hoped I would be the director for the process drama. They told me I had been an excellent director. I honestly could not fully take it in at that moment, but their words meant the world to me. There were others far more qualified, and even those who would have preferred to be the director than to perform on stage. One individual mentioned how I had unknowingly cast her perfectly because she struggles to memorize. Her role had pushed her in ways she didn’t think she could handle. But she was amazing! It was surreal. I had a completely different role in this play. One that was definitely out of my comfort zone. And as a result I had grown in ways I never could have imagined. Everyone hugged, cleaned up, and promised to keep in touch.
And just like that, I knew how my daughter felt on the last day of class. She was so sad. “I’m going to miss my friends so much!” she told me. I listened and empathized, but was silently thinking: “Are you serious? You’ve been working so hard and have been super stressed out for weeks. Now you’re saying you wish school wasn’t over?”
I can honestly say that I understand her better now. Yes, I was relieved to be going home to see my family and get some much needed sleep. But the end of training was bittersweet. Something incredible happens when we do hard things with others. A bonding that is impossible to explain.
Friends and family often ask me why I would subject myself to so much hard work and stress for something that I don’t get paid for. I never have a great answer to their questions. What these projects teach is so much more than can be explained in a simple conversation. You have to experience it to fully understand. There is a method to the madness.
There is vision.
There is purpose.
There is success.
There is failure.
There is growth.
And I’m here for it all!
