Kafkaesque

A long time ago, way back in the late 70s, way back before the Earth was cooled, I was in junior high school. It was back in the day when Star Wars movies were good and so was Saturday Night Live and life in Mosinee ran along as it should for a 12 year old: simple, exciting, new, the promise of great things just up ahead if only you can get through gym class knowing how to put a jock strap on the right way and work up the nerve to ask girls to dance with you at school mixers (Thank God for Mary Pratt who was my 'default' dance partner, and I, hers.. we saved each other from many depressing dances!).


The most exciting thing about being in 6th grade was working with the then new 8th grade English teacher Mr. Kafka on drama productions. Kafka was cool because he was irreverant and funny, his hair was always a little crazy and his moustache frazzled and for a 6th grader, having someone teach you how to do something that you always considered goofing off (ie. drama) and instilling within us that somehow you could not only make a living at this playing around but that this wasn't about being good in drama, but it was as important as sports was in building teamwork, community and fostering imagination.


Pretty heady stuff for a teacher putting us through our paces getting us to improv the entire script of Treasure Island in one afternoon. Naturally it was also cool to see a teacher let his shirt tail hang out and sweat - even the phys ed guys never seemed as physical... the thing that is dismissed about the theatre is how much energy, effort and work it is. You sweat when you create, you use your brain, sure, but you also use your body to create the character, to react, and to embody that character.


Probably no other teacher in my life gave me more of a self confidence boost that Kafka did... especially in 7th grade as we did a scripted show (Hole in the Wall Cafe) and another improv show (Snow White) where I was trusted with lead roles. Here's how great this guy was- the drama program got so popular in 1976/77 that there were too many people for one show that spring. We talked about doing the same show with two casts but I remember kids not liking that very much. But due to the freedom of ideas that flowed within the group, we came upon a new idea - a two part show, the first half would be traditional Snow White and the second half would be Snow Pinky - a fractured fairy tale with Happy Days overtones. Since I was Doc in the Snow White show I don't remember much about the Snow Pinky show but I can't imagine how Kafka pulled off creating two shows simultaneously.


In 8th grade it was a real weird sensation for a bunch of us to be in his English class. We'd already known him for a couple of years and it was a re-mapping of a relationship between us and him. Naturally it was a writing class and he gave us lots of things to think about and I learned a three hard lessons along the way.


The first was early in the year. Elvis had just died and we were busy at work on some assignment. Kafka was a fan and would often put music on while we wrote; it created a mood and while I've not since tried to write to Elvis music, I felt oddly comforted when LILO AND STITCH came out a few years ago, the entire movie is laced with his songs. I didn't know why at the time but I suddenly had this passion to write. It actually was a moment while I was temping at Disney and saw the flick in their screening room that helped me start to get back on track with my writing after a long hiatus.


Anyway, this one day we were all working on something, the Elvis music played and Kafka ran around the room helping those that needed questions answered. We were all feeling in a pretty good mood, you could feel the crackle of creativity snap pop and zing through the room and I for one was getting drunk off of it. Well, Kafka happened to be helping someone at a desk across the aisle from me and as the room was small and the desks close together, when he leaned over to help that other person, his butt was just right there a few inches away. My best friend Tim (who had also been in a lot of Kafka's dramas - he played Dopey to my Doc) sat in front of me and I motioned to him about this sort of friend but very much our teacher's butt. Hey, we were 13. I mean really. So I jokingly held my hand hovering over him as though I was going to spank him and just smiled and laughed at Tim with a "Do you dare me to actually do it?" look when Tim reached out and knocked my hand down causing me to actually smack Kafka on the ass.
I. Was. Horrified.


Kafka just sort of stood up with this vaguely menacing look in his eye and just when he'd stood up tall and turned towards me, lip synched in time from the Elvis song "Be kind to me!" Tim and I erupted with embarassed, silly laughter and it just went to show me, teachers have a sense of humor too. (But don't press your luck)


But my second lesson from Kafka that year was a little more serious. We had been asked to throw out sports terms one day in class and as we called them out, Kafka wrote what we said on the board. After a few minutes, there was maybe a hundred words. The assignment was then: write a sports story but don't use any of those words. The whole room went silent. I remember I made an audible gasp at the impossibility of it. I probably said more because suddenly Kafka turned to me and said something like "would you like a more traditional English class? I can DO that!" and ran to the bookshelves and started passing out textbooks on writing, ones we hadn't ever used. Naturally I felt horrible for doubting his methods and I, of anyone in the class, should have known better. All was forgiven as he saw my/our ashen faces (everyone else I think had thought it impossible too but I was the one who actually audibly said something although I hadn't really intended to) drop with the realization that we were really hurting his feelings and also not appreciating this amazing gift to learn things in a unique way.


The third lesson was something that was more meaningful to me than probably Terry ever knew and probably it's not even something that I have yet to fully understand, even this many years later. We had done a fall show, A Tale of Two Gangs, it was a sort of extension of the Snow Pinky show but it was less of a satire and more of it's own story. After the leads were cast my pal Kristin and I were given the task of creating our own characters and inserting them into the show. There were the two gangs and we were on opposite sides and along the way we decided that we (naturally) were the comedic relief. I was Weird Willy (who played with a sock - don't ask. I'm not sure I knew what it meant either) and Kristin was Isabelle or Izzy. Izzy wore cat eye glasses and was dorky and over the course of rehearsals we just tacitly decided to out-weird each other irrespective of whatever else was going on in the show.


The culmination of our 'cross gang' love affair happened during the talent show portion of the show. Izzy sang "I'm a little white duck sitting in the water, a little white duck, doin what I oughter.." at which point everyone in the cast boos her and Willy comes out to save her from humiliation. There's a strobe, we run to each other and knock heads and then go off for the rest of the show in (I suppose) romantic bliss (or what passed for it in our imaginations as 8th graders in 1977 Wisconsin).


The last show of the year and my last show in junior high was a drama called "Unforgotten Scars" and, well, it's been a long time and I forget the plot of it but I think it had something to do with a haunted house and an old woman who lived there who had buried her daughter.. I don't know because I was given the role of a monster in the lead characters' nightmare. I had to dress like him and put on green makeup. Granted, it was cool that I got to run onstage and bounce off of a springboard so that it looked like I was a flying monster.. but I was a monster on for a minute nonetheless. And I was pissed.


And the lesson was hard. There are no small roles, only small actors Kafka said. And I had to learn it the hard way. But Kafka didn't just stop there, when I complained to him that I had nothing to do in the shows during my 8th grade year, he said to me, and I'll never forget it, he said that he wanted to give me the opportunity to create my own roles within the show and that he trusted and believed in me so much that he knew I could do it.


I. Was. Gasping for air.


In my own way I thought that I had been discarded after having been found to be not talented by him.. and it was just the opposite.


These lessons were hard, wonderful, sacred to learn and I thank Kafka for teaching them to me regardless of how long it took me to learn in particular that final one (and who says I've learned it?)


I didn't see Terry much in high school, I was busy with new friends and the Hansons and the continuing drama of life and I left home and went to school and made my way in the world. But things have a way of coming full circle.


Back in 6th grade when I was in Treasure Island, Terry's co-director Barb Munson and I got to be friendly and it was years later that she asked me to do a library show with her, a puppet production of the story, the Big Orange Splot. It was then ten years more when I would do the story as part of a storytelling class in graduate school. And it would be a couple years after that that I would write the libretto for the musical version of it that was performed at a children's theatre conservatory in Long Beach, CA.


And it was in 1996 that the Wausau Community Children's Theatre would produce the show and perform it at the Grand Theatre, a childhood landmark of mine if there ever was one. And it was after the show that I was embarassingly asked to sit at a table and sign the Splot program for a long long line of childhood neighbors ...and there was Terry again. The hair, slightly lighter, grey with age, the moustache still frazzled, those specs still firmly in place. He smiled and said "I don't imagine you remember me"..


And I gasped again.


"How could I forget you?" I said, "you're the reason I'm here right now!".


And that was no feint statement. The confidence that I developed in junior high, the improv and storytelling skills that Terry taught us all contributed to me being at that table at that moment.


It was a weird moment, Kafkaesque... in the best way.