GLIB

As a former high school drama teacher, I am often asked if I watch GLEE. Most people assume I love this show about a male, high school show choir teacher...that it in some way relates to my own experience as a performing arts teacher.

Truth be told, I’ve only seen one episode. The pilot. And it wasn’t for me.

When I taught drama and film criticism at J.L. Mann High School, the students and I made some really remarkable plays together. But there was a very specific aesthetic at work in those productions...an approach to educational theatre-making that is not addressed in the American Idol-inspired, GLEE.

Making a play with friends (and enemies) is one of life’s most rewarding experiences. But that’s not because we neatly overcome our personality quirks and learn to work together...or because the depressed girl finally learns to hit the high note...or the ugly duckling becomes a swan...or (god forbid) a teacher finds redemption in the musical theatre delight of his until-this-very-moment misfit students.

Play-making rewards us because it is not a tidy act. It happens intimately...almost hidden and secret from the rest of the world. The best plays are raw and honest and true to the bone...warts and all. And in that, there is gorgeous humanity. Life revealed. Broken but hopeful.

Implied in the word “glee” is a kind of trite fun...a thrill ride over before it even starts.

Sadly, many people look back on past experiences in the theatre—high school plays or otherwise—and think of them as theme park visits, fuzzy in their memories. Many even pine for those days...the youthful energy they represent...the roller coaster of emotions, the applause.

And they see that reflected in the show, GLEE.

I hope that people who have made plays under my direction remember them less...wistfully, more aspirationally.

I strive to make plays with a hard-eye on the future...for what the play made in this moment means for our lives lived after the curtain falls.