Never Walked In High Heels

“Why does Paulina say that?” I asked the absolutely terrified looking actor. “What did she have to lose here and why is she so open to Leontes?” No answer. The ever-present rain was hitting the outside of the rehearsal room making us all want to curl up and take a nap rather than focus. “Ok, let me ask you this: Can the situation get any worse?” The actor stopped for a moment and then shook her head. “No, I don’t believe it can. I think at this point, she –” “She?” I questioned. “Ok, I feel like the world is ending so I may as well speak my mind and go down in flames. There’s nothing to lose, even as a woman in a royal court.” “Good. Why?” There is utter silence and I can tell that my actor has been frozen in the headlights. I can’t get anything out of her in this state. She now feels inhibited. “Ok. Let’s back up. What do Leontes’ actions imply for the court?” No response. “Remember when we were talking a few days back about the divine right of kings? Now that he’s made such an error, and everyone knows it, what does that imply?” There was silence for a moment and then the smallest voice answers me. It’s a moment that no matter how often it happens, it shocks me. A woman who is substantially older than myself has made a discovery. She can let her guard down as a Royal Shakespeare Company actor, to have the humility to learn and the openness to accept. This is what I love about my job. We, as a collective, have the ability to put ideas into other people’s heads and bounce them around until we create something. And of course, the most terrifying of all questions to answer is, “Why?” 

It takes many sculptors to form the mind of a woman. Her parents, yes, they are integral in rooting her and making her feel secure, knowing that there is always a home to return to if she needs it. Ideally, men teach her from a young age to value herself so that she refuses anything that is not going to be beneficial to her. The women in her life teach her the deep strength that can only come from a woman, the kind that can melt steel. But sometimes individuals go beyond that, refining the woman in ever-increasing complexity. 

The greatest education I’ve ever received did not happen in a classroom. True, he was my high school history teacher for three out of my four years, but the lessons extended long after the bell rang. It would be easy to say he saw past my disability, or he saw my potential before I did, or any number of other clichés well-meaning individuals come up with when describing their favorite teacher. And, to be cliché myself, I must say that all of these fall desperately short from the truth. The education that he gave me is visible in the young woman I eventually became. Not a day goes by where I don’t use the skills he taught me within those four years at Stevenson High School. There were other teachers, true, who had a remarkable influence on my life, and Stevenson was indeed a place full of them. But his continual questioning of my own ideas and interpretations served to make me uncomfortable. And out of that discomfort came a more rigorous mind that was unafraid of being challenged and confronted.

It wasn’t until I moved to Britain that I realized that my teacher gave me the confidence to think freely. I remember one spring morning when he challenged me to no longer look at the Cliff’s Notes in order to understand what I should be thinking about while reading Kafka’s Metamorphosis. If I wanted to dwell on the quandaries of existentialism, that was fine, but if I wanted to take a more romantic reading of the work, and look at it in a way no one had ever thought of before, that was all the better. Like in theatre, it’s not about finding the correct interpretation of the play, its what the play can say in communication with the current zeitgeist that is important. During an age where we were taught to read for meaning, he took it one step further and asked us to read in order to have a conversation with the author. No two conversations between the author and the particular student would be alike. But if it was well thought out, well criticized, and well defended (and above all able to withstand his continuous question of “why?”) it was worthy of approval.

My teacher also gave me what every teenage girl needs: the poise to present an argument succinctly. During my freshman year I was appalled at how often he taught us that we didn’t need to have this argument or that point because it was redundant. We were not allowed to tap dance around the answer in class, taking up time when we didn’t need it to draw our own conclusions. For me, I learned that a few simple well-chosen words from an otherwise quiet person can be more powerful than pages and pages of drivel. I am reminded of this every day in my “day job” as I sit through meetings for the London Underground, listening to the bureaucracy of government officials. I think that says it all. And it is because of this skill that I have the confidence to go into the Transport for London office and ask men much older than me to justify their policies on disability and access. 

The most important gift he gave me was an unquenchable thirst for truth. It is rare to find in a teacher a combination of such high academic standards and even higher personal standards. From years of his lectures, I learned that the true goal of education is not to get ahead in the world or to climb the corporate ladder. A lifelong student wishes to learn so that she can understand and appreciate all corners of the earth to her fullest potential. Learning is an act of worship to whatever cosmos of her own choosing as the act seeks to discover the complexities of this universe. A teacher like that knows that poetry connects with biology which cannot be separated from math with directly influences history. The question of “why” is one that is unending in education. If something is true it can withstand such natural interrogation be it onstage or in the classroom. After four years of studying with my teacher, I too wanted to become a midwife for ideas and found theatre a place where I could do it.

The actors leave and I bid goodnight to the director while gathering my things. He comments on the work we did on Paulina and encourages me in the process. I am flattered as I head to the Underground station. “You’ll make a good Paulina someday. She has all the strength of a woman who loves the truth but still wishes to change the world. Should be an easy role for you play.” He reminds me to get an application in for the National Theatre Young Directors Conference before we go down our respective subway tunnels. On the escalator I think of my teacher and all he invested in me as a scholar and a mentor. To him, a life full of learning and adventure was never far off for me. And though he did not know the details, he always assured me it would be with opportunities that many young people never thought of. I love being a young woman who has the confidence to be living in a foreign county and discussing ideas unabashedly. I smile as I think that because he asked me ‘why’ so often, I look at my life, my future, and my dreams and think ‘why not?’