To Sir, With Love

             On an August afternoon in 1996, I was standing in what was laughingly referred to as the “backstage” of a little theatre in Edinburgh, Scotland waiting for our stage manager to call places when my life flashed before my eyes.  Not my actual life, mind you, my life in the world of theatre.  Compared to some, I was still very much a toddler having only been involved with the on goings of the stage for just over two years…but boy! What a couple of years had it been!

          It all began on the first day of my junior year of high school.  I had transferred to Russellville High School in order to become the newest member of High School Drama Troupe 4104.  I was monumentally pumped!  Not only had I never been apart of an active drama department before, but, until that day, I had never even set foot on a REAL stage!  It took all the will power that a fifteen year old girl could muster not to run through the backstage entrance and Tarzan swing on the wing curtains in order to plop smack down on center stage; but, somehow I managed to control myself.  As I walked onto that stage and peered out into that enormous auditorium, I was in awe.  I imagined this was the way that people must feel the first time they see a mountain.  For me, it was that majestic, that…well, magical.  When my eyes worked their way from the very top row of the balcony all the way down to the front rows, they locked with the eyes of a man who will forever be the single biggest influence in my life—theatrical OR actual—my drama teacher, Mr. Bryan.  We grinned at each other for a minute and I knew he understood exactly what I was feeling.  With a knowing smile and a partner in crime wink he said to me, “Just wait until it’s full.”

          For the next two years in Mr. Bryan’s drama class I learned everything from how to sweep that magical stage to the way in which to stand on it.  I learned how to think on my feet through Improv games.  I was assigned monologues in order to prepare me for learning entire scripts—sometimes multiple scripts at the same time depending on our season!  I learned that there is no such thing as pre-casting so I’d better prepare an amazing audition and damn well fight for the part that I want in order to get it, which is a skill I use to this day!  I learned how to sweet talk strangers into giving me money for a fundraiser that they normally wouldn’t give two cents for.  I realized that theatre competitions are just as intense as national football championships and that sometimes you gotta take one for the team.  I came to understand what it means to tell a character’s entire life story in one pointed look.  I was eventually able to drink convincingly from cups that weren’t there and find my light on the stage without having to search for it.  I took up the mantra that there are no bit parts but instead juicy character roles and found that it is, in fact, perfectly believable for a seventeen year old girl to play a ninety five year old woman with some intense rehearsals and just one session with Mr. Bryan’s make up brush!

          Then, in the spring of 1996, I learned about loyalty, support, and drawing strength from others.  Two weeks before my graduation my world was smashed by an on coming car.  I don’t remember much from the first few days following my car accident; however, I remember that the first face I saw in the hospital after my parents’ faces belonged to Mr. Bryan.  I’ve been told that in the short time preceding surgery in which all the x-rays and testing was performed, every time I screamed out, he seemed to suffer as much pain as I did; and, that once the hospital staff wheeled me away and into an operating room he waited with my parents hour after hour until I was out of the woods and wheeled into recovery.  When I finally woke up and was cognizant of what was happening around me, I was told about my injuries.  A fractured spleen caused massive internal bleeding.  My right ankle had been crushed and my right knee had suffered a compound fracture.  All of these injuries were far better than the alternative of losing my life, (which I had come perilously close to doing), with one minor problem:  I had the lead in our dance show that was to be performed at The Edinburgh Fringe Festival in August and my entire right leg, from my toes to my hip, was encased in a cast.  I was devastated.  I felt that the moment that I had been preparing for throughout the last year and a half was now being taken from me.  I would have to sit in the audience and watch someone else perform my role—the worst fate any performer could suffer, as far as I was concerned.  Shortly after an emotional meeting with my doctor during which I was told that I may never walk normally again much less dance on stage in two and a half months, I tearfully greeted Mr. Bryan when he walked into my hospital room on his daily visit to the hospital to check on me.  My parents told him what we had learned from the doctor and the first thing he said to me was, “I’m not recasting your role, so you’d better get to work.”

          Those words gave me the strength and shear determination to fight my way from that hospital room to that theatre half way across the world.  So, there I was, two and a half short, pain filled months of intense physical therapy later, standing in that ridiculously tiny backstage in my lyrical dress and dance shoes.  Mr. Bryan had kept his promise to me.  Truth be told, I knew that my absolutely lovely and talented understudy probably would have done a better job dancing that role then I did that day, but it would never have meant the same to her as it very much did—and still does—to me.  Mr. Bryan knew that.  I stood there thinking about all of his support, his strength, his laughter, his tears, his lessons, his threats and his promise that he kept to me, and then I went out on that stage and did exactly what he spent two years teaching me to do—I found my light…in every way imaginable.

Wishing you the happiest of birthdays with much love and appreciation for your years of teaching and inspiring your students…I thank you, Mr. Bryan.