Vergil’s Coffee

40 Plays in 40 Days

Project Summary: I plan to accomplish the ultimate renewal and experience for anyone who enjoys words: to see performances of all of William Shakespeare’s plays in one summer by actors who are amateurs in the park to professionals on an air-conditioned stage.

I’ll begin with the end to save you from reading the rest of this blog entry: My proposal for the 2009 Lilly Endowment Teacher Creativity grant was accepted Saturday. This was my seventh proposal in as many years and I’m a bit happy (and, perhaps, relieved). The grant is all about “teacher renewal”: the idea that wouldn’t it be nice to give teachers in the state of Indiana the chance to do something really cool in the summer so when those same teachers get back into the classroom that fall, the students would be getting back a re-energized teacher?

We are renewed by what gives us happiness and even joy and every once in awhile–perhaps in once in a lifetime–we create an experience that is our ultimate “fantasy.” For the baseball fan, it is a tour of all the Major League stadiums in one summer; for the avid hiker it is to walk the Appalachian Trail; for the marathoner, it is to qualify for the Boston Marathon. And for me, an English teacher and one who spends his days in the classroom talking and reading and discussing the English language, it is to spend a summer with Shakespeare’s plays. The ultimate “rush” is to see all of his plays in one summer. It may mean little to the baseball fan or the hiker or the marathoner, but the concept is the same: to break from normal life and schedule and to over indulge in what pleases me the most: language in its finest form.

That’s the gist of the grant and I was feeling a bit like the Susan Lucci of Teacher Creativity grant writing. Seven years.

Shakespeare’s plays are the backbone to an education in the English speaking world and those plays are also a strong thread to what we teach in schools. Besides the King James Bible, Shakespeare’s plays are, in a sense, a major foundation for how we communicate as thinkers, writers and speakers in the United States. And the cool thing is that Shakespeare borrowed from other traditions and reframed older stories to fit into this language of his. And today we borrow from Shakespeare’s plays in our spoken and written phrases and in our entertainment in its many forms. To go and view and to participate as an audience member in his plays for a summer would return me again to the roots of that language which I use every day in my classroom.

I really liked all of my proposals and I took to heart the idea of what would really jazz me up. I felt as though the first two were good ideas but they were probably not well-thought through (what I mean: the details and the writing probably not that strong). I almost think the judges of these proposals thought “Okay. Nice idea, but really doesn’t sound exciting to me.” When I first heard about the grant, I thought it would be a great experience to train for and participate in the US Chess Open Championships in Pennsylvania. I really liked chess and I thought I would get a lot from the experience, but apparently I didn’t convey that very well. The next year, I proposed getting my private pilot’s license ( a wholly impractical accomplishment, because I had no intent or means to fly planes in the future. I just thought that the challenge of doing something out of my regular routine would be really cool). Apparently, I didn’t convey my desires very well on this proposal either.

But this is not a mere “totally cool trip” for an English major teacher. If you talk with the baseball fan, it’s not merely the stunt of going to every baseball stadium for the sake of just merely watching a baseball. For the hiker, it isn’t merely to say that one has merely walked the AT in a summer or two and “Here’s the pictures” to prove it. For the marathoner, it isn’t merely to run another 26.2 miles in a specified time so that one can merely run in Boston. For the amateur (literally, “the lovers”) of each of these pursuit, it is about awe and mystery and deep revival of one’s spirit.

It had been awhile since I’ve been home at this point in 2003, so the next proposal, I tried to think of a way of getting back to Northern California and do something that would rejuvenate my teacher batteries. Obvious answer: study and research Jack London in the Valley of the Moon area by Glen Ellen, California (just a valley over from where I grew up). I loved the quote from London: “All I wanted to do is to find a place to write” and that’s what I wrote I would do for that summer.

For me, to attend all of Shakespeare’s plays in one summer is in a sense a stunt: can I do it? It will force me out of my normal summer activity and into a movement around the Midwest for the occasion of play. But like the baseball fan, the hiker, the marathoner, this experience has a totally other layer of meaning to it, and that meaning lies within the awe and mystery of language on a stage. It is the thing I do each day in my classroom, where my classroom is the stage and language is the “thing.”

My next three follow a common theme: the inuksuk of the Inuit people in Nunavut, Canada. I’ve been drawn to theses structures for some time and thought it would be cool to go to Bafflin Island and #4: take pictures, run in a marathon in Arctic Canada, and write about the experience; #5: take pictures and build an inuksuk garden in our backyard; and, #6: take pictures and notes, travel around Northern Indiana to take pictures and notes, and then write a longer non-fiction article about the beauty of both landscapes. I felt really good about the last one and had a really kind letter of recommendation from the author Kristen Laine (a wonderful writer and a person whom I was looking forward to working with on the project). Apparently I couldn’t rouse the imagination of the judges, because I got another 3 rejection letters.

Each day as a teacher I engage in a play and in play; each person has their role and the stage is where, as essayist David Sedaris suggests, two or more people pause and look. I’m not suggesting that the roles and the script are stale; in fact, the roles and script are dynamic because we are human and when humans are put in a certain situation and certain conflicts arise, characters move the story line along and often we relearn lessons that have been repeated time and again. I am energized by being in the classroom; it is the reason I get up in the morning and get a giddy grin on my face because I realize that even though I have been teaching for about 15 years, the script will play out with my students and colleagues, allowing us to hit common themes that never seem to get old.

I kept the growing pile of rejection letters pinned to a cork board next to my teacher computer as a reminder of, well, sometimes I suck at stuff. What I mean is, it seems that one has to fail a lot to learn a lot. And I don’t say this to make a cute point of “keep on keeping on” pile of bullshit. I didn’t look at those letters and put my hand on my heart and swear “I know I can do better next time because I’m good enough, smart enough, and doggone, people like me.” Nope. The letters were a reality check: “you’re not that good, you know?”

So that is why I am requesting the Lilly Foundation to grant me the opportunity to do something that is truly one in a lifetime: to see all of William Shakespeare’s plays in a summer. Like most other people, I was introduced to Shakespeare through a class reading of Romeo and Julietas we trudged through the language and got occasional updates from Mr. Gier and the textbook on what was really happening. But, as I soon found out, Shakespeare ought to be heard, not just read, and so Mike Robert and Jeff Graves and Wendy Hanson would volunteer to assume Romeo, Mercutio, and Juliet, and I think I started to understand that the words make sense. Mr. Gier then showed us the film version and like most English teachers stepped in front of the “naked scene” which only perked our interest as adolescent boys. The next year we got Julius Caesar, then Macbeth.

So, I’m at Evan’s chess tournament Saturday and texting Lori every once in awhile to let her know how the day is going and around 1 p.m. we have the following text-exchange:

• Lori: What r u wearing
• Me: Nothing. How about you?
• Lori: Im in the parking lot come see what im wearing
• Me: Are you really here?
• Lori: Yes
• Me: Wow
• Lori: No get out here fathead
• Me: Okay

As an English major we were required to buy the Riverside Shakespeare, a tome that is the approximate size and weight as my 4^th Edition of the American Heritage Dictionary (the big one). We were required to read and discuss a majority of the plays and I simply could not get enough of the history plays and the Henry series. Still to this day, one of my fondest academic memories was a paper I wrote titled “Parent/Child Relationships in Henry IV (parts 1 and 2).” I loved reading the text and exploring the genius of Shakespeare as he sets up the strained father-son relationship and seeing how these real characters had a dynamic quality to them. I well up now when I read how Hal, turned Henry V, implores God: “much more would I do” in seeking forgiveness for his sins and the sins of his father.

And I go outside in the snow and I don’t see her and she calls and I ask where she is and she says that she’s “by the doors” and that’s she’s getting “a bit” impatient, that the moment is turning into something that doesn’t make her happy. And it’s then I realize that she’s at Goshen High School (where these chess tournaments usually are played) and I tell her that we’re just down the street at Chandler Elementary and she sighs and says that there’s a train and she’ll be there in a moment. She gets there and I walk the block or so to see what’s she’s wearing.

For the past 14 years, I have chaperoned a departmental trip to the Stratford Shakespeare Festival in Ontario and each fall I see this as a “recharging” of my emotional and spiritual batteries until Christmas. Each year we see mostly terrific versions of Shakespeare’s plays, and I never tire of being caught up in the language and action of words on stage.

And then it hits me as I’m walking to the car that I must have received my envelope from the Lilly Endowment Foundation. Mind you, I’m used to receiving this letter on the Saturday of the last weekend of February. I was wondering, though, why Lori would have driven the thing to me at the school on this snowy Saturday. Then again, perhaps, maybe it really did have something to do with what she was wearing.

My proposal is not without some logistical issues. In a 300-mile radius of my house, there are at least 22 Shakespearean Festivals or theaters that “specialize” in putting on at least one or two Shakespearean plays a season. Not all of these festivals or some of the smaller “in-the-park” summer repertory troupes have published or announced their plays for the 2009 season. To judge the feasibility of seeing all of Shakespeare’s plays, I looked at the 2008 playbills and found that even the more obscure of Shakespeare’s plays were performed. So, with well over half of his plays mapped out (it seems like the history plays provide the greatest challenge right now), I will set aside a separate trip to either San Francisco or New York City just in case the other theaters do not have the few plays that I need to fulfill my goal.

I opened the door and she said: “So, you want to see what I’m wearing?” And I said “Okay.” And she said, well, open my coat.

I want to qualify what has been said up until this point. I want to say that we’re “not those type of people” or some other blushing confession of our marital relationship, but I’ll skip that for now. All I can say is that Lori said that I should open her coat and I did and there was a beautifully shaped envelope: The Big Envelope. And it’s just like the college thing: small envelope: thanks, but no thanks; Big Envelope: You’re in.

Throughout the entire project, I will be recording my adventures through a blogwith my FlipVideo camera and my little eeePC computer. Last summer, I did something similar where I recorded a daily vlog (video blog) called “No Sock Summer” and I plan on continuing that idea with this project. I plan on posting short videos of where I am and of some of the people I run into at the plays (whether in an air-conditioned theater or on a lawn chair in the park). Also, I will blog about my responses to the play itself—about the characters and themes I experience during the play.

When I got back to the holding area for chess parents back in the school, I told Evan to which he asked “So, does that mean we can get a new iMac?” (Thanks Evan…though I probably would have asked the same question if I were in his shoes). I twittered the newsand read through my contract and written responsibilities of grant recipients. I also skimmed though the other recipients and under ELKHART saw my name and proposal and then Andrew Cowells from the junior high. Pretty cool. Before I put the whole thing away, I reread the most meaningful part of the Big Envelope: “Congratulations! It gives me great pleasure to inform you that your proposal…”

Seeing 40 plays in 40 days will be one of those once in a lifetime experiences, and it’s connection to my classroom has something to do with the plays themselves (as I teach both Hamlet and Julius Caesar in my classes). But more than the plays is the text we create when we talk about what we have seen or read and I think this is a more profound idea that will impact me as an educator. I ask my students to read and respond, and the learning seems to happen in that discussion or the essay or the project that is to show me they have learned or are learning. I will use the material I have written during this project as springboards to further discussion with my students about their “readings” of what we view and read in class. I think the more my students see me as a reader/writer/thinker/speaker, the more I am a part of the community I try to build within my classroom. I suppose then I become a part of the script that is being played out in the stage of my classroom.