Over the course of the last three weeks, I have been leaving the office for part of the day on Wednesday and Thursday to make the rounds to several high schools in the Bay Area, mostly Marin County, but also into the East bay. The purpose of my return to high school was to be a teaching artist in the schools, preparing classes coming to student matinees of My Children! My Africa! by giving them a short lesson on the play before they come to see the production.

In the last three weeks, I traveled 291 miles and dropped in on 12 schools and taught 15 classes. Some days I went to one high school, other days I went to four (yes, four) different high schools. The classes ranged from 7th graders to Seniors, and as few as 12 and as many as 80 kids in a class who were students of History, English, Drama, Dramatic Literature, and Social Studies.

It was a big challenge for me. I don’t typically have any problem talking in front of groups of people, but there is something intimidating about high school, when you’re there and long after you’ve gone. My respect and admiration for teachers has grown exponentially as I have stared down teenagers talking, drifting, fidgeting, eye-rolling, and groaning. As I said to Josh and Brooke, the amazing Expanded Programs team, it can be the difference between seeing one bee (not scary) and seeing a swarm of bees (terrifying). One teen is fine, easy to relate to, even inspiring, but a mass of them can be daunting.

Each class had done a different amount of preparation with their teacher before I arrived. Some had read the play, some had studied the conditions of apartheid, some had done nothing at all. My visits were a combination of exercises and activities done with the class to illustrate the concepts of apartheid, discussions of the characters and the design elements of the play, conversations about the playwright, and sometimes heated debates about the relevance of this play to their lives.

I hope at least some of what I tried to teach them sunk in. It might not have made an impact until they saw the show and heard something familiar in what the actors were saying. It might have made a difference in how much they enjoyed the production of My Children! My Africa!, but if we’re able to introduce the theater to a new generation of audience, then we’re able to sustain what we’re doing in the long run, which is an important part of our mission at MTC.

For the most part, the students, teachers, and schools I visited were very inviting and incredibly appreciative of the opportunity to come see the play. For that, I thank them all, and I hope that they will continue to attend theater, not only when it is a requirement, but also when it is elective.