The Hare

Like a good theater-maker, I am wrestling with all the actions that might be played in constructing this essay, a reflection on participating in James Loehlin’s inaugural Winedale class in the summer of 2001. And as they are wont to do, my thoughts and my heartstrings are moving quickly and rhizomatically, spreading and shooting: first come memories of performing three plays in a barn—Comedy of Errors, Henry V, and All’s Well—and those memories connect to my own years teaching Shakespeare and I laugh thinking of my students and that laugh leads me to all of the hours spent maniacally giggling with Winedale classmates and so I ponder the funny (perhaps it’s more like quirky) people we’ve become twenty years later and that pondering of the more adult paths we’ve taken since 2001 links to my own days working at the Guthrie Theater, links to a memory of a stupendous Romeo and Juliet sword fight, but then thoughts of work land me back in the present. My eyes return to the scene before me, settling on the trees in the...

As I walked into my classroom on the first day, I heard a student say loudly to a circle of friends, “They told us the professors might look like students, but this is ridiculous.” In 1981 I did look ridiculously young for a professor, but this was not the last disruptive remark from that student. The course was a first-year seminar in Plan II on the philosophy of tragedy—which, to these students must have meant traffic accidents. Luckily there was also a student in the room who was serious about theater. He was tall, with dark hair and a compelling voice. He soon became the center of gravity of the main part of the seminar, while the traffic accident segment revolved in its own orbit till mid-terms. But after that, this segment was drawn down into the class, thanks largely to the gravity pull of the star student, whose name was James Loehlin. I came to know James further through Plan II philosophy the next year, when I encouraged him to prepare to apply for Marshall and Rhodes scholarship applications, and I watched him start a group that produced plays. We became...

“How would you like to play King Lear at Winedale this summer?” James Loehlin asked me out of the blue. “I’m half his age, literally,” I spluttered. “Well, you’d be twice the students’ ages, which is perfect. Consider it practice,” James concluded, bringing negotiations to a close with that characteristic blend of unimpeachable logic and wry humor. This brief conversation happened in James’s office on the University of Texas at Austin (UT) campus in the late spring of 2006, when I was a Teaching Assistant in his Drama of Modernism class. Having been a professional actor in the UK for 15 years, three of them spent touring five-person Shakespeare productions around American campuses, including UT’s, with the Actors From The London Stage company, Austin had hooked me in that way it does, and I had enrolled in the English PhD program in 2004. But now, with a Master’s degree in view, I had resolved to return home. Taking on the formidable challenge of the Shakespeare at Winedale summer program seemed an...