Play Games (Part 3)

First Day Of Class

Play Games (Part 3)

First Day Of Class

Jimmy The Greek (Dimetrios Georgios Synodinos) was THE preeminent odds maker in Las Vegas history. 

After recovering from spasms of laughter, Jimmy attempted again to conjure the odds of the events that follow unfolding as they did.

Seconds after recovery, he was stricken by next level paroxysms of laughter which continued as he was rolled into the ambulance. 

The erstwhile docs and nurses in the UMC Emergency Department doped him up. He regained consciousness the next day.

Nobody could’ve, in their wildest imaginations, seen a day where I would have a legit appointment as a professor in a name brand university. 

I barely graduated from High school and resented almost every day I spent there. I did for my mother.

Cue: Loving Son Fiddles

Against all odds, there I sat, Professor Dubin (for eighteen years) in the vaunted S.I. Newhouse School of Communications at Syracuse University.

The ramp up to Newhouse begins on a flight to Mexico. My seat mate and I become fast friends on our way to the same resort. Day one, LSD and sick at sea. More later -

SCHOOL DAYS

I taught a wide variety of courses, many of my own invention. There were also a few standard offerings in regular rotation, several levels of Screenwriting.

My approach to classroom teaching was, politely put, unique. To move courses into the realm of infinite play is a challenge. Overwhelmingly, ’students’ take particular courses to meet requirements, to fill out their scorecard so as to graduate on time and get into successful careers as soon as possible. The play parts of the ‘college experience,’ such as they are, happen outside of class.

I started teaching with a promise to myself, if it wasn’t fun I was done. So here’s part of how I eventually set it up.

First session:

No need to call me names. Skip ‘professor,’ call me Dubin.

We will not play tug-o-war for grades. No need for you to spend the semester figuring out how to please an ‘A’ out of me, while I make that hard to do. NO. You have an ‘A.’ True story. Now let’s play.

No tests. No compulsory assignments. No required attendance.

We’re here for each other. Let’s ALL learn. Including me.

As has been elaborated in ACTING HUMAN, play is the way to learn. Learning to play is learning to learn.

"It is an invariable principle of all play, finite and infinite, that whoever plays, plays freely. Whoever must play, cannot play." ~James Carse 

And We’re Off

First semester of my first year at Newhouse, I draw the Senior Seminar in Screenwriting. 

First session: 

I ask each person in the room to introduce themselves. I get name, rank, and serial numbers.

With less than twenty SENIORS in a cozy conference room, a group I innocently suspect have a genuine interest in screenwriting, it stands to reason that some of them must have shared a prerequisite screenwriting class. So I ask, “do any of you know one another from an earlier screenwriting class?” (Good question, right? Remember, I’m a newbie.)

Casually cool guy pointing to a woman only several feet away, says, “yeah, I took a class or two with her.” 

“Her? Do you know her name?”

“No.”

A couple of women knew one another by name. Turns out they were sorority sisters. Most did not. I mean mostly most by a long shot.

And so, in an instant, I gathered that time spent in class, was for mostly most, an  impersonal, transactional, and finite game. Check off a course. Get a grade. Graduate. Then, off to “real life.” 

I harbored the naive notion that we, all of us in the room, were sharing moments of real life now. 

The seeds of my first session approach (as outlined above) were planted. It took a year or two for them to sprout fully. 

That evening we did all learn each and everyone’s full names. We vowed to use them in all class meetings and to help one another if we stumbled.

NOTE: I will write much more about so-called education. It is critical to our wellbeing that we see educational institutions clearly and revision ‘education’ to foster lives lived alive.

A Night At The Olympics

CUT TO: Screenwriting Class - 13 years later

By now the overture was established. No tests. A guaranteed “A’. No pressure. Voluntary attendance. Play to learn. 

Followed by introductions. Left to their own devices (unless this wasn’t their first Dubin experience, there were many recidivists) it was pretty much still first name, academic year and major. I had, by now, fine tuned the questioning process. A gentle sit-down comedy oriented way to coax unmasking (often nonchalance masquerading as ‘cool’) and revelation.

I explained that we were here to create humans and other animals as characters in screenplays, so that actors could embody and enliven them for the camera.  

The more we invest in knowing ourselves, the more able we are to to know the characters ‘as if’ they are ‘real’ in the ways we see ourselves as ‘real.’

We are humans collaborating with other humans to create humans on screen. As it turns out, in life, too.

Knowing the particulars of our lives is a vital element of the screenwriters craft. We, screenwriters, act on paper. ‘To know thyself’ is not optional, it is the essence of our work.

Furthermore, we would spend a semester working closely together to do this work, helping one another with increasing skill and generosity.

So, it was incumbent upon us to reveal. To drop our masks and share a few details of our lives. I assured everyone that we were all fascinating, and that if we look even a bit beneath the surface that truth would jump out. 

Our seminar sessions were three hours long. I took at least one session and usually part if not all of a second to get through my curiosity in action process. 

On top of creating a cohesive group (a whole) that knew lots about one another, we ‘got’ that that’s how ‘character’ in a so-called fiction, was revealed as relatable and believable. We also established the value of curiosity as skill.

Fairly typical of each first session was adamant denial from each that there was nothing even remotely interesting about them.

I started with surnames, which I had on my class list. I’d guess at pronunciations. This was often fun and led to a brief stop at ethnicity and its place in their life.

Where did they live? I’d usually get a state, and then ask if I wanted to find them was my best bet to pinpoint the geographical center of that state, go there, and shout their names at the top of my lungs? Or were they able to give me closer coordinates to save my voice? What city or town? Part of town? Directions?

Parents, siblings, other relatives, pets, kinds/sizes of dwellings, elevators or not, household help or not, decors, posters or fine art, so on and so on. The outpouring was, absolutely fascinating. People want to know themselves and one another. Curiosity!!!

As a sense of safety grounded us, most were truly eager to share quite intimate details. 

I’m simply Dubin, fellow human, not shrouded in the role of judging professor. A guide, sharing my life story in the process. We engaged in living dialogue.

On this particular night, after much discovery, some requiring calls to mothers and fathers, questions about toilet training (don’t look at me, they came up in the course of conversation - someone took a Psych course), house sizes and types, the nature of occupation - it’s astounding how little young people know about what their parents actually do all day.

One young man lived in Newtown, CT, near Sandy Hook, and had several family friends and neighbors involved in the shootings there. Tales of life and death.

Last up, the tall, lovely, and physically strong woman seated to my immediate right.

She having heard all that came before, life/death, toilet training, sinus surgery and the lot, nevertheless, insisted that she had nothing of interest to offer.

I went to work. She lived in (as best I can remember), Windsor, Canada. Happens I knew a few people there. At the time I spent occasional weekends directing workshops for actors at the National School in Ottawa. This owing to a relationship with Maggie Trudeau, the former Prime Minister’s wife, and current Prime Minister’s Mum. She was a NYC chum and Wynn Handman alum. 

So Natalie Mastracci and I had a bit of Canada talk. (BTW: I got the pronunciation of Mastracci without hesitation having grown up in an Italian neighborhood.) 

How did she get to SU? “Legendary sports journalism program.”

“Sports? Do you play a sport?”

“Well, I row.”

“I didn’t know we had that here.”

“Only intramural. Not Varsity.” 

“Do you row at home?”

“Yes.”

“A team. A crew? What do you call yourselves. I live in Ithaca so I see Cornell rowers train on my walks along the inlet, which was built for their use. Big program at Cornell.”

(a beat)

“Does your crew or team or whatever you call it have a name?”

“Yes. The Canadian National Team.”

“WOW! I saw them last year (2012,) on television. They rowed hard against the USA to win SILVER. You were you on that team?”

“Yes.”

Remember: Five minutes ago there was nothing interesting about her.

“That’s incredible,” says me. “I saw you. I’ve met lots of award winning people, very few Olympic Medalists this up close and personal. I know what show folks do with Oscars and Emmys. Especially Jews and Italians. I know too many of them. They give the statues to their mothers for prominent display. What do Italian Canadians do with an Olympic Medal?”

“Well, I carry mine with me.”

“You do? Like all the time? Like now?”

“Yes.”

“Would you mind showing it to us?”

Natalie scooped an Olympic Silver out of her satchel-like bag and passed it to me.

In only moments, the SILVER MEDAL was on its way around the room. Each in our turn, we marveled at its luster. We were stunned by the unexpectedness of a major plot point so early in our time together.

If there’s anything I can see clearly, it’s an ending. The out moment in a story episode. So, I called a wrap on class. 

Natalie Mastracci had no designs on professional screenwriting. She did excellent work, grew as a screenwriter by leaps and bounds, and contributed generously to the whole experience for everyone.

If you learn to do anything at a high level, you have learned to practice. Natalie knew how to practice, play, and learn.

ACTING HUMAN invites us practice life lived alive.

Here’s Natalie, pictured second from right.

Until next time,

Lights Up!