THE OVERNIGHT PROFESSOR
by Lisa Soland

I have lived in Los Angeles several years, working as an actress, singer, director and producer, but primarily now as a playwright, with my work being performed around the globe.  In August of 2006, I was asked to head up the MFA Playwriting Program at a leading University for the upcoming fall semester.  Having no previous University teaching experience, one could certainly refer to me as “The Overnight Professor.”  For this reason I was asked by the editor of this publication to write an article about approaching an academic playwriting position from the perspective of a non-academic.  Though this particular perspective proved helpful in writing this article, I can assure you it was not helpful in my ability to adapt to this new and unfamiliar environment.

My teaching experience has been gathered primarily through “The All Original Playwright Workshop,” which I started and have been running for many years now.  The goal of the workshop is to create an environment of inspiration, and a place where I can hopefully pass on to others what I have learned from the world of playwriting.  Like many self-taught writers, I had little hands-on mentoring, other than occasional guidance from my friend, playwright William Luce.  So I basically plodded my own path down the road less taken, particularly by women.

My thought was this -- if I could give to others what I did not have, my students could cut years off their journey to productions and publications, and make more significant progress than I had been able to.  And because I have seen significant results with my students’ work, I felt the same approach might be equally as successful, if not more so, if set within the world of academia.

But things have changed since I was in college.  Young people today have significantly more disposable income which enables them to own the new technology available today, like cell phones.  I actually wrote letters to correspond.  And today’s students wouldn’t think about leaving home without a laptop.  I borrowed a typewriter to write my papers.  As an overnight professor it took me weeks to realize that the rectangular objects hanging around students’ necks were not stylish, modern-looking necklaces but a handy tool called a TravelDrive, making it impossible for them to use the now common excuse, “My printer broke.”  But because of this new, fast-paced world of “not getting it right but getting it right now,” I found that the attention span of young people had been dramatically shortened, further explaining the popularity of the ten-minute play.

Even more disappointing, and much more destructive to today’s developing new writers, is their inability to put off gratification.  Patience is a quality that must live at the core of a person if they are to see true, lasting success.  When I was in college I would wait for weeks for my mom’s “care packages” to arrive, filled with delicious homemade cookies.  I recently returned to my alma mater to teach a four-day workshop on the ten-minute play, amazed to find a Starbucks conveniently located in the lobby of the campus library with an unending line running out the door.  And where do they get their money?  When I was in college I walked everywhere.  I couldn’t even afford a bicycle, yet many students today are driving finer cars than their professors.  It’s mind boggling, really.

It’s no wonder that they look at college as being an instant leap into an already established career as opposed to how we looked at it in my generation – just a very good start to a long climb.

The Washington Post recently printed that “Researchers at Florida State University studied teens’ educational and occupational plans between 1976 and 2000 and found a widening gap between what teens believe they will do after graduation and their actual achievements.”  The report showed that high school seniors in 2000 were much more materialistic than students had been in 1976.  In 1976, 26 percent of students said they planned to get an advanced degree and 41 percent planned on working as a professional.  In 2000, 50 percent of seniors intended to continue their education after college, and 63 percent planned to work in a professional job.  However, the percentages of high school graduates between the age 25 and 30 who actually attained these goals has remained the same.  Students today are much more verbally ambitious, but much less likely to actually do the work necessary to achieve these goals.

So, as a playwriting professor, I found students wanting to write well, right now.  And you and I both know that ain’t gonna happen.

Writing is all about process.  But due to their familiarity with instant gratification, most of my students wanted to feel as if they’d nailed a piece with their first draft, when they hadn’t.  (Who does?!)  So despite the fact that I would attach pillows to any constructive criticism, the words still landed on them like a ton of bricks, which made listening even more challenging for them.

As a guest speaker, I am often called upon to discuss the format of the ten-minute play and rarely, if ever, asked to address the mysterious turns and shifts of the full-length (probably because it would take too long).  So, who would possibly be interested in a three-act?  Inspire young writers to read and attempt to wrap their brains around the quality and depth of Eugene O’Neill’s “Long Day’s Journey into Night,” and you’ve made some real progress.  Playwrights like O’Neill were placed up on very tall pedestals in my day.  Because of superb work like this, I continue to approach the blank page with a humility that often renders me inoperable.  In the author’s dedication written to his wife Carlotta, O’Neill writes, “Dearest, I give you the original script of this play of old sorrow, written in tears and blood…a tribute to your love and tenderness which gave me the faith in love that enabled me to face my dead at last and write this play...” 

No one writes in tears and blood today.  No one faces their dead.  Instead, they go to the psychiatrist and are quickly prescribed Xanax, which they swallow with their low-fat Starbucks Latte, and then they go to the gym.  In today’s world where the attention is primarily on good looks and plenty of money, there is very little reward for facing honestly the pain of our past, and offering it up as redesigned art, with the higher, loftier hope of transforming society into something greater.  Don’t misunderstand me, psychiatric drugs have their place and are invaluable to those who need them.  But let’s face it -- without this medicated fast relief, we had Van Gogh.  And though he suffered through much of his life, he left behind a plethora of work that will never be forgotten.

Along with patience and sometimes long suffering, another indispensable quality for a playwright is the ability to take critical feedback with a disposition of gratitude, modesty and class.  Developing this quality can make all the difference in one’s writing career because it enables one to improve upon that which has been written.  After all, writing is rewriting, right?  That’s what all the really good writers say.  And in order to rewrite most effectively, we need to consider the input of others.  So this too became one of the qualities we worked together as a class to strengthen.

Possibly due to the newness of the program, none of my students in the undergraduate or graduate classes had been taught professional playscript format.  This, along with their difficulties with basic spelling and punctuation, motivated me to base 50 percent of their grade on how well they were able to capture the way a character actually spoke.  This ability requires effective punctuation, proper formatting and accurate spelling.  The benefit of sharpening these skills really shows at the point a script is handed to an actor for the initial cold read.  It is only at this stage in development that you are able to see how successful you have been with your writing, since plays are meant to be heard and seen, not necessarily read.

There were unexpected challenges, for sure, but by the end of the semester, a good, solid style of working had been established between me and my students. Unfortunately, it was then that I had to make my way back to Los Angeles.

One of my more gifted and hard working students (funny how those two things seem to go together), graduated, moved to Los Angeles and signed up for the “All Original Playwright Workshop,” where she continued to excel as a promising writer.  I asked her recently what she feels is the difference between the playwright workshop -- what she perceives now to be the “real world” -- versus academia in general.  She replied, “I felt like we [as students in the University] had a pretty good idea of what playwriting was.  The faculty encouraged us to do it but they didn’t show us how.”  She’s referring to the established structure of teaching versus the realities of show business and what it requires.  Academia uses the basics by the book, but the “business,” as it is referred to, often looks in another direction, outside the box, in order to succeed.

My friend and writer, Steven L. Sears, said on the subject, “In the business the energy is designed toward the newness; changing direction like the wind.  That’s what keeps it fresh.  In academia it’s like trying to turn the Titanic with a rowboat.  At best, you can just slightly alter its course.”  As an objective outsider, an overnight professor, I feel this is one of the most significant realities working against academia, particularly in the larger colleges.  Even changes for the better come slowly, and this requires patience from everyone – professors and their students.

I was particularly struck, however, by the degree to which instructors genuinely cared for their students; willing to work tirelessly for an inch of progress.  Many of the professors oversee oversized classrooms and are overworked and overstressed.  Professors are highly encouraged by the administration to pursue outside stimulation -- to participate in the creative aspects of their particular craft outside the University setting.  But because of the above mentioned restraints, this outside stimulation, which would be for them like a breath of fresh air, necessarily often becomes the lowest priority.

Again, though my perspective is limited, it seemed to me that the biggest challenge for the college professor appears to be isolation.  And the more physically isolated the school, the more vulnerable to this the professor can become.  If they become isolated, the information from which they have to draw upon to teach their students becomes outdated, stale and possibly even inconsequential.  And…the longer the isolation…the more susceptible to this…they seem to become.

So the question remains -- are our students being taught what they need to learn in order to prepare themselves for the world outside academia?

A student stated in a departing letter to me, “I feel that many of my classes have been the theatre world according to a textbook or academia with very little actual practical experience.  In your class, I had no idea I would really experience working with actors and see my work as part of a production in front of an audience, not once but three times.  I also learned proper formatting, how to write appropriate letters of introduction, as well as basic tools to help me write producible material.  For the first time I feel like I had a class which actually prepared me for the real world.”

Shouldn’t this be how we approach providing their education?  Shouldn’t this be how we properly prepare them for the real world?  This was my initial thought when I entered the University environment.  This is why I thought I, a non-academic, had been chosen to contribute in this academic setting and this is what I tried to do; I tried to prepare them to win more effectively than I had been prepared.

During my visiting semester, my undergraduate Intermediate Playwrights and my MFA Professional Writers produced two evenings of theatre that contained lengthy monologues written, produced and directed by each of my students.  Then as their final, we cast and directed staged readings of their original ten-minute plays.  In addition to these three events, my MFAs wrote and staged readings of their one person, one-act plays.  I found the students responded extremely well to this “real world” hands-on, experiential approach.  They were learning a great deal, from doing, and it held their attention too because the demands on them equaled what they were actually capable of doing, which is a whole other subject.

Another student of mine shared with me that he felt the class had been taught practical application skills for working as a playwright in the real world.  “[Lisa’s] token motto was always ‘I want to set you guys up to win.’  She takes what she knows from the real world and tells us how to better our work, based on her experience.  That is more valuable than any textbook could offer.”  It’s the old apprenticeship thing, right?  I take someone on as an apprentice and they learn the ropes by working alongside me.  And together we learn by doing.

Throughout my stay as a visiting professor, I continued to ask of the situation one favor -- “If I could please make a difference in just one student’s life.”  This hope is the furnace that fuels me, that fuels us as teachers.  But even now with this particular visiting professorship behind me, who knows?  Do we ever really know the impact we have on each other, and on those who trust us with preparing them for their future?  Jimmy Stewart’s character George Bailey from It’s a Wonderful Life had the unique opportunity to learn just how his life affected others, but I believe for us in real life, we can only guess.

According to that study printed in the Washington Post, if students today are much more ambitious than they were 30 years ago, but unable to accomplish what they set out to do, we as teachers must ask ourselves why.  If they aren’t able to look at the reality of life and how we must work for what we achieve, what good are all those reality shows?  What good is affluence?  Have we baby boomers worked so hard for our children that we’ve lost track of teaching them how to work for themselves?  These are the questions I find value in asking.