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Teri's Drama Testimonial I have been asked by the PEF to write this week’s letter as a kind of launch to a series of statements from some of us whose work at the school has benefited from the PEF and the grants provided every year to support our program. In all honesty, I’m torn. On the one hand, this is a letter that could almost write itself; the Parker Essential Fund has not only supported, but in many cases made possible some of the most interesting, compelling, and amazing things that have happened in our school’s first nine years. I could fill this page, this packet, with words that go far beyond lists, of the kinds of initiatives, equipment, and experiences our students and staff have been granted, and the impact of each and every item.
As the Principal of the school, and before that, as a teacher here, I have witnessed a kind of wonderful process of the school growing itself, almost learning to inhale and exhale as we have become accustomed to cycles where ideas turn to proposals, and proposals turn to reality, and the signs of that reality are made manifest in our science labs, on our athletics fields, in the hands of drummers, and in the feet of dancers. The grants provided by the PEF have helped to assure and convince teachers at this school that we are not doing this work of striving for a particular kind of discipline-based integrity to infuse our work with students alone. The PEF has been a consistent core of support, affirmation, and encouragement for innovative teaching and learning, and has provided a constant partnership with the school as a facilitator of hopes. I could write about all that and more.
At the same time, there’s a part of me that wants to be a little more selfish than a Principal perhaps ought to be. There’s a part of me that wants to use my moment to talk about the ways in which the PEF has functioned in a very real way, as part producer, part silent partner in the development of theatre at Parker.
Before I came to Parker School, I had established a teaching and theatre directing practice that was characterized by “doing theatre wherever”. My former school, though completely committed to the arts and known regionally for its terrific programs in the arts, struggled with facilities and despite its admiration for the kind of theatre that was happening, had virtually no space for a play to be performed. And so a lot of my shows with students were touring shows, performed in prisons and homeless shelters and hospitals and facilities where audiences were unaccustomed to, but grateful for opportunities to experience live theatre. Perhaps this is partially why, when I first heard Parker people talk about “the vault” as a possibility for an actual on-site “theatre space”, I was ecstatic. At the time, it seemed like a real step up!
We began theatre at Parker with our shows in the vault, the lead-lined room with the door twenty inches thick. The Parker Essential Fund has demonstrated its commitment to helping theatre find a place at this school since our Antigone, in 1996. The PEF has helped us to look at our less than perfect spaces and find ways to execute scenic designs that transcend the obvious realities of vault walls and cafetorium floors. The PEF has supported the construction of scenic environments as distinct as Anne Frank’s attic apartment to the dismal, raked structure where Gregor Samsa discovered his Metamorphosis. A Grant to support theatre at Parker enabled professional musicians to work in residence with student actors to develop and perform an original arrangement for Our Town. The PEF helped to support our original adaptation of Karen Hesse’s Out of the Dust, a production described by Ms. Hesse as “one of the most important events of her life”. The PEF has provided a means for expression, and a way to help reflect the extraordinary interest and commitment Parker students have for acting and for learning the actor’s craft. I cannot think of a single request for help that has gone unanswered. From assisting with funding to improve our various and strange theatre venues, to helping with the costs associated directly with production, the Parker Essential Fund has made an essential difference in creating and sustaining our theatre program.
It may be quite a while till we have the ideal performance space, but our next production is just around the corner. A new adaptation of Sophocles’ Antigone, will be developed early winter, and we will need …. Well, who knows? As the 2 design emerges, so too will the production’s needs. One thing seems assured, though, and that’s the readiness of the PEF to assist with whatever it will take to bring another Antigone to another Parker opening. I could go on, but I know I’m just one voice in a pretty large chorus. A few others will speak over these next few weeks about what it means to be in a community where parental support for good schooling takes the form of labors of love, (auctions and Spring Fests, and Road Races, and events that take hundreds of people hundreds of hours) and also take the form of direct support for the work we do with students every day in classrooms and on special occasions on the “stage”.
I have been asked to write today about the PEF, but this job hasn’t for one moment felt like work. It’s just saying out loud what’s true, even on those days when the theatre is dark. Teri Schrader , Principal , Theatre Director!
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