THE BAD KIDS

I love teaching theatre to people of all ages, it is one of my greatest joys. I especially loved when I was teaching young people and I was handed The Bad Kids—
The anarchists,
The ones who had insomnia,
The ones who wore vintage Issey Miyake they found deeply buried in the bins at Goodwill when everyone else was sagging,
The ones with their hair in Japanese wolf cuts pre-Bieber,
The ones donning black horn rimmed glasses before they were on sale at Urban Outfitters,
The ones who wore the heavy leather coats in one hundred degree weather and tank tops in the rain,
The young intellectuals who loved Shakespeare and hated singing and dancing yet somehow found themselves dumped-off for the summer in a musical theatre camp with only one “serious acting” class: mine.
And I especially loved their parents who would always hand them off to me at the beginning of the semester with the same disclaimer.
“Look, we’ve tried everything from soccer to Scouts — theatre school is the only hope we have left for keeping our family together — good luck and no pressure.”
These were the kids whose mothers and fathers didn’t understand them because they wrote poetry instead of playing sports,
They referred to John Keats as “Junkets”,
They felt if you didn’t believe in the search for truth you were just taking up valuable space,
They believed in that old cliché about the art in themselves and not themselves in the art,
And they believed theatre could change the world,
And so do I.