They let me give a little speech at graduation.
Not real graduation, but the little ceremony for theater kids where we talked about how great we were for being theater kids. I wore a shitty blue shirt that was too big and a suit jacket instead of a blazer. They don’t teach you how to dress like an adult or pay your taxes in theater kid school.
I didn’t even let my parents go to the real graduation, which they paid so much money for. This was the one that mattered. I think we got little gift bags. Or mugs? I got to give a little speech. The students voted on who among us would give the little speeches. So the faculty didn’t choose me, but they let me do it. They asked me to please be appropriate.
They’d tried to kick me out a few weeks earlier. I’d laughed at a teacher during class. I didn’t think it was cruel to laugh at this teacher at the time. I’d asked a question, and she didn’t answer it but then said, “does that answer your question?” And that’s just the kind of interaction that makes me laugh. I wasn’t allowed back in class after that.
I tried to reason with this teacher, but she wouldn’t return my emails. I found out later that the administration advised her not to have any contact with me. “Weird,” I thought. It turns out that’s the deal when a teacher implements the process to expel a student. Nobody told me that is what was happening.
Before long, I found myself in Student Trial. That’s not what they called it, but I had to sit in a circle with the whole faculty and explain why I thought I was there, which was a challenge. Then they got to go around and tell me how much they did or did not like me. I imagine this process is outlined in some old tome somewhere. Ancient scholars must have set out rules for disputes between masters and apprentices, and now hundreds of years later, we’re still bound to the process while studying things like “Lay On The Ground And Pretend You Are Blue Paint.”
I still was not aware I was arguing to be allowed to stay in the program, which I’d already paid for, less than a month away from graduating. At the time, it was just “the group of four people you’ve spent every day with for three and half years, plus like twelve other people you’ve barely met will see you now.”
Most of the faculty said nice things about me in this Ritual Of Expulsion - even the ones I hadn’t really known that well. That felt very triumphant at the moment, but now that I’m at the ripe age of still-20-years-younger-than-any-of-them-at-the-time, I think the whole production was a bit immature.
The lady who brought us all together said she hoped it was a learning experience. One of my teachers suggested I send her some flowers to smooth things over. The next year, she tried to get the rest of the faculty fired by emailing the dean private emails where they all talked shit about the dean, but it didn’t work and she got fired instead. 14 years ago, I thought that was yet another win. 14 years later, I think the whole thing is so exhausting and sad.
I would go on to give a little speech. They asked me to keep it nice. I planned on just tearing the whole thing down. Truth to power! Bang on the podium when making a point! I wanted them to know they’d let me down. Maybe mention that time they brought in a casting consultant who went around telling us what roles we could expect to be typecast as, and when she got to me, she just paused for a second before simply saying “retarded” and moving on down the line.
But then I got to the podium, and none of that fire was there anymore. Instead, I only remembered kindnesses extended, laughs shared at parties. Perhaps the teachers were bound to a process they didn’t approve of. Maybe people had my back more than I realized. At the end of the day, we’re all actors or trying to be. Even the faculty. We’re all just dumb narcissists. “They tried their best,” I thought.
I am, to my eternal annoyance and constant saving grace, a big softie. Plus, my mom was there. My mother taught me how to give the middle finger to assholes in charge but would sigh heavily any time I did.
I sometimes wonder if the me I know is the same me everyone else has to put up with. If you don’t know, I can sometimes be marginally self-righteous, he wrote in his little newsletter about himself.
So I cut all the mean parts on the spot. I told my friends I was proud of them and told the younger students to make their own art without waiting for permission or approval. I reminisced about seeing theater in London and doing comedy in a drag bar that served me when it shouldn’t have. And I closed with a line from Henry V. I’d used “Crispin’s Day” for a jury the year before, and one teacher, who was new and had never spoken to me before, called it “the most unconvincing, boring thing” he’d ever heard. By Jove, I am not covetous for gold, but I am a petty bitch.
It turns out none of my teachers were there for the ceremony; they had other things going on. But the lady who taught costume design found me after and told me I nailed the Shakespeare, so.