Things, arranged.

The Studio Seattle

After decades as a professional director of television and theatre and university professor of drama, I am now embarking on a new venture.

The Studio Seattle is a place where actors can go deeper, challenge themselves, explore more and improve their craft with a focus on getting actors ready for the real profession.

There is a vibrant and dynamic acting community in Seattle, but there is a dearth of instruction from teachers who have actually worked at a national level. I'm talking prime time television and nationally ranked professional theaters along with top-ranked MFA actor training programs.

I've been there. I know what it takes. 

If you are interested in taking your craft to the next level, check out The Studio Seattle's workshops and classes. And yes, I have a blog there about acting, too.

Because there is no substitute for real experience.

The Extinction of the Whole Mind

After over a decade in the halls of higher education, I am leaving the world of tenure and academe as an associate professor of the dramatic arts. There are many personal reasons I have departed such a secure and coveted position, the most important one being that I am continuing to evolve and grow as a human being and want to apply my experience and skills with story to writing full time. What is disheartening about my departure from many valued colleagues and students is how the American university is becoming a place of de-evolution and shrinkage.

De-evolution in the sense that after the financial crisis of 2008, a new era of austerity, economic expediency and specialization has gripped the academy. Shrinkage in the sense that instead of enriching minds and enhancing the essential citizenry of our next generations, the academy is undergoing a narrowing and shallowing of education that will, in my opinion, come to haunt us soon in the 21st century.

Renaissance, Enlightenment, America as a Democracy of Informed Citizens. Noble sentiments that were major the themes of the past many hundred years of western civilization. When the twentieth century was dubbed "The American Century" by some, one of the key proofs therein was the dynamic transformation of our society that was a direct result of a broad based, world class and accessible university education in each of our fifty states.

However, today's public universities have been commoditized, politicized and legislated into something strange. Let us list here just a few of the more bizarre and existential conundrums facing today's universities:

* Seats to the highest bidder: Chronic budget cuts and a demand that universities behave in a more "entrepreneurial manner" by increasingly vocal stake-holders have led to a disproportionate level of foreign and out-of-state students who pay premium tuitions displacing local students. In-state students, some with exceptional academic qualifications are being turned turned away. They don't pay very much tuition. Universities that try and quota enough seats for local students face enormous budget shortfalls as a result, with no relief due to forced tuition increase caps. So much for the noble intentions of the land grant state university movement.

* Silo-ed departments competing with each other for student credit hours to get a slice of the ever shrinking budget pie must increasingly "popularize" their curriculum in order to attract students. The result is a dumbing down of curriculum to the lowest common denominator. Student credit hours mean dollars. Therefore, butts in seats by any means necessary. Hence, the Impact of the Hong Kong Kung Fu movie and Sex, Drugs, Rock n' Roll become two of the most populated entry level classes for incoming freshman in the Humanities department. Welcome to higher learning in America circa 2018.

* Credit pressure on students to specialize early and remain committed to one narrow track of study: competitive programs demand specific pre-requisites, and deny the student any real opportunity to explore other areas of knowledge due to heavy credit loads. The result is a collapse of the very essence of "universal" knowledge. Instead, students are tracked into ever narrower fields of specialization to feed a voracious economy. Know less, study harder, graduate and embark on a career as a human widget.

* The culture war wasteland: Today's university is a battleground of polarization, narcissistic identity politics and "us" versus "them" thinking that reflects much of our current wider culture, but is exacerbated by a fractured, isolated and limited world view which is the by-product of over specialization. There is little possibility for real learning when there is no light, space or air for an idea or argument or concept to be presented without the threat of retribution or lawsuit.

I could go on, but these are a few of the top factors that have rendered our universities impotent and ineffectual. When the ability to consider both sides of an argument or issue is lost, when the idea that a well educated, well informed citizen is a better citizen for a democracy is disregarded for expediency, when the belief that a narrow mind is of greater value to a society than a whole mind is advanced by those who wield power, then we have come to a dangerous time in history.

Finally, just so you don't take this article as the post-professorial whinings of a frustrated academic, consider this: in one of the most fascinating and challenging research projects I ever engaged in at the university, I tried to help Amazon's human resources people in Seattle solve a problem with their college recruiting programs. The problem was that Amazon had a seemingly limitless number of college applicants who could fulfill their technical, logistical, computational and industrial needs, but they have been struggling to find college graduates who could become future leaders; students who could think critically, solve problems, imagine creatively and see the bigger picture. They were looking for whole minds. I hated giving them the bad news:

Unfortunately, we just aren't educating a lot of those in these times. They don't seem to be in much demand.

A writer's wisdom

Advice for all storytellers from my friend and colleague, Professor Shawn Wong:

1. You can't always control what happens to you, but you can control the story that you tell.
2. Tell the truth, not the facts.
3. Write about what you wish to learn, not about what you already know.

Such and honor to work on the same campus as this founder of Asian American literature in America.

Mise en place, mise en scene

In the kitchen, mise en place refers to the chef's process of preparing ingredients and setting them in an ordered arrangement for eventual inclusion in a given recipe.

The selection, preparation and arrangement of ingredients before the cooking phase allows a chef to quickly access the right ingredient at the right moment when the heat is on.

A director's work requires a similar approach: selection of the text, selection of the performance space, selection of the actors, selection of the designers, selection (determination) of certain themes, throughactions, dramatic questions, aesthetic gestures, form, dynamics, etc.

Most of the time some of these ingredients are selected for us: we are hired to direct a certain play at a certain theater. Sometimes we are given certain key elements to work with: a certain actor, a certain designer.

That being said, the director must still engage in a careful process of mise en place: a clear understanding of each element, its nature, its benefits, its drawbacks, its role in the project. Then, when how to bring each element into the process and to what degree.

Once the heat is on, there is little room for error. The rehearsal period is finite, the opening night is set. When is the right moment for this element or that influence? How much sway does one allow the element when it is included? What is happening during the "cooking"? Are the ingredients blending correctly? Is one element underused? Is one overused?

Great chefs do not need measuring cups nor need to be told when an ingredient should be included. They work from feel, taste, observance, aroma and most importantly, instinct.

Successful directors develop an intuition for this process as well. Is it the right time for that note to the actor? Is it the right note? How are the elements coming together today? How will they blend over time? When is the dish ready to be served? Does this coincide with the schedule?

Many inexperienced directors begin the "cooking" process in a state of hope. They believe things will work themselves out in the rehearsal process. They have an overestimation as to their own leadership and artistic clarity. They have not examined the ingredients deeply enough, nor anticipated the potential problems with certain ingredients they have either selected or been assigned. Rehearsals become a labor, and dish begins to become confused. Timing is thrown off. Ingredients are not blending well. Unforeseen obstacles start to dominate the process. Ultimately, the project / dish served is muddled and unsavory.

Because the nature of many of the elements directors need are difficult to determine, there is always the potential for disaster. However, a director should engage in a rigorous process of learning the nature of each element that will be used.

Who really is this actor? What makes them tick? What are their assets? Their shortcomings? What do you know about their personality? What impact will their personal issues have on the project? 

How does this designer really think? What are their values, their impulses, their limitations?

Who comes to this theater? Why? What is the relationship between the project and the audience? What will it mean to them? What is the nature of the dialectic between the work and the viewers? 

Are your assessments / determinations regarding the text accurate? How well do you understand the writer's work / aesthetic / style / form / language / purpose?

Finally, are you being clear and honest with yourself as to how you believe all these elements will come together to make the best work possible? Are you serving another agenda? For example:

"I want to work with this person." Why? Are they right for this project, or right for you?

"I want to work with these people." Why? Are they the best you can get, or are they the best at making you feel good about yourself?

"I want to do this kind of work." What for? What does this work do for others?

"I love this play." So? Go and hug it in the privacy of your own room. Why should we love it?

"I have something to say." Write a blog post. No one gives a shit what you have to say. (Sorry, that's a particular irritation of mine: art as a narcissistic podium for self-expression.)

This aspect of mise en place interrogates the director / chef's own role in the cooking. Am I the right person to make this dish at this time? What is the task at hand? Do I understand what is required? Is my technique up to the task?

All of this work is a kind of mise en place, a difficult process that can bring a kind of clarity to the work. Before you turn on the burner, be sure the right ingredients are each in their place, including yourself.

May all your dishes be remarkable.

The Square is Red

I teach classes in at the University of Washington School of Drama about 300 yards from where a shooting occurred last week during a campus speech delivered by a guest of the University of Washington College Republicans. Red Square is a bricked over field which was the site of a temporary U.S. government building durng the 1909 Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition. It was covered with red bricks in 1969, just in time for the mass student protests that would take place in opposition to the Vietnam War.

After the now infamous incident, the issue of "Free Speech" has become the political football. The positions are well-defined and over-stated daily, both on campus and nationally. Speaking controversially is protected speech, censorship of any kind is un-American. Incitement, dog-whistle politics and Hate Speech are not Free Speech. The battle lines are drawn. In the midst of this, there are guns. Plenty of guns, even though the University of Washington has a no firearms policy. As a professor I have to live with the fact that I may be lecturing to students who may be carrying firearms. That is the world in which I now live. Talk about your "trigger warnings."

Free Speech. A hallmark of our democracy. A fundamental right. The guarantee that opinion and diverse points of view will not be censored in our republic. I recall the old question: does freedom of speech give one the right to yell "fire!" in a public place when there is no fire? How does the well being of the many intersect with the rights of the few, or the one?

Perhaps you've seen the bumper stickers: FREEDOM ISN'T FREE. This is one way some express their support for American military interventions abroad: there is a cost to safeguarding the freedoms we enjoy.

If this is true, there should be an inherent responsibility in the nature and spirit of "free speech."

Getting a driver's license affords one the freedom of the road, but that freedom does not include the right to drive over pedestrians in a clearly marked crosswalk.  What if gun rights advocates agreed that responsible gun owenership, like responsible car ownership, was inherent in the right to bear arms? What if those who cloak themselves in the mantle of "free speech" agreed that such speech carries with it a responsibility due to those who will hear it?

This would require a move away from selfishness, stridency, absolutism and a narrow, reductionist view of the word "Freedom." Perhaps this is too much to ask of the average American citizen. It would ask one to view "freedom" as a privilege as well as a right, not as a bludgeon and a weapon.

In our time, we have learned to weaponize words to advance self-interests: Freedom, Truth, Rights, etc., and once these words become weaponized, then the shootings escalate accordingly.

So, the square is red.

The universe in a quill

From the sharpened point of a quill, Shakespeare let flow a torrent of words that somehow described the entire universe of human existence, philosophy, politics, society, economics, family, love, theology, ethics, emotions and essentially every dimension a human being can experience.  That smallest of points, where the tip of the quill released the ink onto the page unleashed words that have never been equalled by anyone else who likewise put ink to paper.

I always took it for granted that a playwright living in an age after Shakespeare would on some level aspire to this most daunting of propositions: "to hold a mirror up to nature" as Hamlet declares. Mirrors show everything, the kind and the unkind.

In my own time as a stage director, I have observed an unsettling and noticeable shrinking of dimension, scope, use of language, thematic landscape and ideas in contemporary playwrighting. A gross generalization, of course, but nonetheless an identifiable trend.

After the Reagan era, we entered the Clintonesque anti-idealism of The Small Idea. Reluctant to stand for either traditional conservative ideas or the progressive vanguard, Clinton exalted in the concept of "The Third Way." Its upside was compromise for the sake of a perceived movement forward. Its downside was an entire generation raised to believe that the object in between, the Self, was to be placed at the center of  all experience. Call this "The Third Person" problem. Many "millenials" grew up perceiving themselves as distinctive beings who could see how their surroundings informed their circumstances and ultimately eschewed a personal politics of idealism for the practicality of self-advancement. This was the underlying legacy of the dotcom boom of the 1990s and the economic revelery that came to a crashing halt in 2008. Plenty was everywhere and committment was nowhere. Avarice was ennobled and sacrifice was derided. The third person belonged to no side of the great dialectic, and was therefore free from the the complexity of considering that the Thing and it opposite could actually exist in the same universe. Bush II and Obama were both men of this spiritually dwarfish generation, extolling incremental ambitions while couching their puny initiatives in the rhetoric of tradition: Bush waged war for oil and influence while at the sames time emptily puffing the words "freedom" and "democracy." Obama equivocated his way from flawed policies to doomed programs while at the some time hollowing words like "hope" and "justice." Both of them, lawyers by trade, were far more comfortable with the minutae of the legal brief than the frightening world of the Big Idea. 

In the cultural landscape of this realm of smallness stands the American playwright: armed with an MFA from some bona fide institution of higher learning, he or she puts quill to page, or more accurately, opens word processing software, begins writing in miniature and continues the diminishment to the point of invisibility. What are the subjects of these writings? They are by definition worlds defined by self-indulgence and rigidness of scope.

Let us name the familiar categories of American contemporary playwrighting:

The drama of identity politics - I, and those like me, suffer nobly at the hands of monsters and must be liberated because me.

The drama of blame - I, and those like me, suffer from the hypocrisy of previous generations and should have the sympathy of all because hurt.

The drama of pity - I, and those like me, feel terribly about the injustices of the world, and want you to feel terribly about them as well. For the low price of $45.00.

The drama of irony - I, and those like me, need to make ironic and witty comments about the state of things and need you all to hear them. For the low price of $75.00 (It's a comedy with a live band, after all!)

The drama of masturbation - I, and those like me, need to devise an evening of self-indulgent and undramatic claptrap that must include excruciating modern dance, original poetry and "physical theatre" because we are gifted and need to share our rare artistry all over your laps. Hey, it was only "pay what you can."

Thus, ever smaller and smaller is the scope of the modern american stage, and ever more righteously pedantic and polemic is the voice of the modern American playwright.

It is quite an occasion to stand among these people when 12 people, eight of whom are family and friends, attend these shows. The look of bewilderment and incomprehension is remarkable. They simply cannot understand why the world is not flocking to their mini-worlds.

It's pretty simple: real people just can't fit into the tiny room of your theatrical imagination.

Give me a writer, one writer, whose quill expands the world instead of conflates it.

The Note

 

Ravi Shankar was one of the greatest sitar players who ever lived. The sitar is a complex stringed instrument with up to 21 strings and an infinite range of tones. It is central to the sound of Hindustani and Indian music, dating back before the 15th century.

Ravi gained worldwide noteriety when he developed a friendship with Beatle George Harrison. It was not only Ravi's music, but his worldview and personal philosophy of living that eventually became the center of Harrison's life.

Martin Scorcese produced a fine and detailed documentary about Harrison entitled "Living in the Material World."

Many European and American guitar players, dazzled by the complex dexterity and virtuosity of Shankar's playing, tried to understand how he was able to command such a daunting instrument.

When asked for any advice he might give to aspiring guitar players, Shankar was quoted as saying:

"Well, be sure to play the note you are on, not the next one."

Here, in a simple and yet profound statement, is a great word of advice for the actor.

We talk about "being in the moment" as an aspirational goal, but what does it really mean? According to Shankar, it would mean that the moment you are in must be fully invested in as if it is the only moment that exists. Because it is. The future is unknown, and in fact cannot be expected with any certainty.

So, we work towards existing in each moment, each "Bead" as Stanislavsky might say, until we look back and realize we have strung these beads together into a strand of life.

The second part of Ravi's advice is also revelatory. It reminds us that some part of on stage will need to, want to, have to consider what is next: blocking, someone else's cues, props, etc. So, there is always part of us that is "playing the next note."

Perhaps we can take more from Ravi's advice if we put ourselves in the position of the guitar player: he is, of course, speaking to a player who knows every possible note combination that would work off a given musical phrase. Guitar players at the highest level not only know every note on the fretboard, but most likely know variations that would work based on what the previous note is.

This is virtuosity. Do actors know every word of the entire play, even if the words that are not their's? Perhaps this is not a fair comparison, for the guitar player surely doesn't know every riff the drummer might play. However, it is very common for me to quiz an actor about their own lines in terms if definitions of words, puncuation, grammar, syntax, etc. and get a blank stare in return.

How can you play the note you are on, when you don't really know what the note is, and how can you have the confidence to not worry about the next note as well?

Close text analysis is exhaustive, boring, repetitive, uninspiring. The lack of it is easy for me to see in students. If you don't really know what you are saying, why are making me watch your work?

I want you to play every note. Not the next one.

And I want you to know everything about that note, the one before it and the one after it as well.

Musicians call this work "Woodshedding." It evokes the image of a guitarist off in the woodshed, alone, for hours and hours, practicing scales, chords, riffs, patterns.

I wish more actors had woodsheds.

 

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Why is Sarah Kane?

 

This week, a student of mine is presenting Sarah Kane's 4.48 PSYCHOSIS as her directorial debut and in fulfillment of the senior capstone award she received through the School of Drama.

It has been years since I first encountered Sarah Kane's work, and I recall the confusion, thrill, hope and fear I experienced when the British "In Yer Face" theatre movement shook the theatre world in the mid and late 1990's.

I also remember sitting in a bar just after 9/11, the single most impactful "In Yer Face" moment America had ever experienced, talking with other artists about the possible prophetic connection between Sarah Kane's generation of playwrights in England and the global seizure of terrorism that was about to take us all prisoner.

Was it it coincidence? Happenstance? Or just artsy types trying to argue that theatre could still be a mirror of society? 

The legacy of the "In Yer Face" theatre movement is actually a recapitulation of the kind of katharsis Sophocles was working towards back in the day. Aristotle put that word, "Katharsis" front and center in his study of how tragedy works in The Poetics. It means "purging of pity and fear" in the audience.

In the audience.

That's the key. The Greeks were interested in making a theatre in their great tragedy that resulted in a visceral understanding in the audience. Something akin to the kinds of experiences folks had in religious and sporting events.

I am unsure about this legacy in the 21st century, especially in America. Katharsis still happens, but at sporting events, rock concerts, religious gatherings and some political gatherings.

But not in theatres.

Definitely not in theatres.

You could argue that this is because in America the theatre is a leisure activity club of the liberal elite (myself being a card carrying member of that club).

If you look closely at who makes theatre and who it is made for, you will find the thinnest of societal strata: the 'enlighented' choir singing to the equally 'savvy' choir as audience.

When "the profession" became an industry with the rise of the ubiquitous 'MFA', (circa 1975 - 20??) the theatre was by definition reshaped by those who were focused on the self-expression of their vocation, at the expense of a bona fide "raison d'etre." (Full disclosure: I have a very prestigious MFA...)

This leaves us in a curious state: In whose face? No, they won't like it. By whom? No, that's weird.

Better to wander in our agreed upon "safe zone." 

I really miss Sarah Kane.

Eulogy: Sarah Nash Gates (1949 - 2015), UW School of Drama Executive Director

 

Casey Stengel said they were “the fightingest bunch of guys to ever step on a ball field.”

New York went on to win the world series that year, but it was the Red Sox Yankees series for the American league pennant that was the story of 1949, when Sarah Nash Gates first said hello to the world in Boston town.

I think she heard Casey from her cradle. Picked up on that fight, she did. The kind of grit that would be associated with the indomitable Red Sox forever.

Over there in old New England; over there where those American voices rang out like bells; from Amherst, from Longfellow bridge, from Walden pond, from the Mount, from Emerson’s “Old Manse” in Concord:

I am going to my own hearth-stone,

Bosomed in yon green hills alone, —

A secret nook in a pleasant land,

Whose groves the frolic fairies planned;

Where arches green, the livelong day,

Echo the blackbird's roundelay,

And vulgar feet have never trod

A spot that is sacred to thought and God.

But before all this good-bying, let us speak of Sarah’s hello – ing

All the way across the country to the mirror side of America:

Northwest. Up here where we have that Washington way. It was your time to build something in this corner of the country.

To where Mary Gross Hutchinson and her hall extended a welcoming spirit to the dramatists of the university, giving over her place of sport and grace to a new kind of creative space.

1984.

You arrived, took her up on the invitation. What shall we make here?

With all the grit and good humor of your New England heritage, you stood front and center, you took the leading role on this special stage.

1994.

When you became our leader, you asked some damn fine questions of us: how shall we do this well? And then, once we do it well, how shall we do it better? And then once we do it better, how shall we strive to be the best? Who are the students we will send into the world? Let us always be beholden to their futures. Let us endeavor to embody and enoble that most elusive of words: excellence.

I can almost hear the echo of Casey behind your smile: “You and our students outta be the fightingest bunch of dramatists who ever stepped foot into a theater.”

That was Sarah’s creed to us at the School of Drama.

What is the story, what are the day to day moments that can catch it all? What are the words that can preserve the quicksilver of a way of life for posterity?

How should we speak of these things?

Maybe in the simplest of ways.

Maybe it’s in the way you did the things that taught us what it meant to be better. To look further, to think harder, to go just a few more steps down the block to find what you are looking for.

We are in New York City.

You and me, to – ing and fro-ing from shops to nook, warehouse to supply store that day in the frosty fall.

What is it you were looking for?

“Buckles, Andrew, shoe buckles. Dickens. Paris. London. Two Cities. 1780’s. Budget doesn’t allow for them, but the shoes need them. I’ll buy them myself. Come with me, it’ll be fun.”

Silver, square, small and subtle, but nowhere to be found.

“Yes, but the shoes need them.”

One more store, one more place…no, no here, no, maybe over there.

I thought you said this would be fun.

Finally, finally…there, in that little box in the corner of the old storeroom…something…yes. These. Please?

Handle them, study them, consider them. Yes. These.

A satisfied smile. An adventure complete. A mission met.

New York City: where soon you'd show our Husky athletes the imagined worlds of Memphis and the Serengeti by way of Broadway, and bring them to tears and shouts of joy, because you reveled in the proof of the power of the theater to make meaning for all lives.

Something you never let us forget.

Wasn’t till much later, when a student asked me why we have to do it again, why we have to go back, why we have to, ‘cause we’re tired and we can’t and it’s late and we….

“Yes, but the shoes need them, I said.”

That is what you were saying to all of us. All of us, your department, all bucking and wheedling and spitting and why-ing and why-not-ing all the time. All of us know-it-alls down the hall from your door. Buckets of needs, barrels of want.

Okay, you’d say: sit down and work with me. We’ll figure out how to do this. And we'll figure out how to do this well.

And somehow, we did. We know how to, now. We’ll keep figuring it out, too.

We just wanted to say, from all of us, to you…Sarah, the shoes look great. In fact, they are excellent.

Against Microengineering the Academy

An open letter to the faculty I teach with:

Dear Faculty:

 I would like to expand on my comments during our recent faculty / staff meeting regarding the subject of “Trigger Warnings”. My assessment, and forgive me if I am not accurate here, is that the discussion was opened with a question: should a department or individual instructor provide what are commonly called “Trigger Warnings” to students in order to guard against unwanted or unexpected personal trauma?

 I articulated a general rejection of this notion, by pointing towards the larger “unwritten educational contract” between a student and an institution of higher learning, and proposed that the institution could, by way of policy, provide or articulate such a warning or notice to incoming students if it deemed it necessary to address this issue.

 One of the basic principles of democracy is the social contract of cooperation which is based on the theory of the common good: it is better to establish red and green lights to regulate traffic for the common good, even though this restricts the individual’s right to free automobile access in a country based on the fundamental value of “Freedom”.

 Another key aspect of social contracts is the pro and the con of each contract, allowing the individual a choice as to whether or not they would choose to engage or participate in a specific group, activity, club, party, etc. Social organizations define this as the foundation of “Citizenship”. To get a driver’s license, is to receive the privilege and to gain the right to operate an automobile, PROVIDED one also agrees to abide by traffic laws, maintain insurance and emissions standards. A driver must choose whether or not they want to engage in this social contract, which is codified in law and through the Department of Motor Vehicles.

 Since the first teacher stood before a class and began to profess on a subject, there has been a sort of social contract, or code, in place to self-regulate the academy. At the age of majority, which we determine in America to be eighteen, an individual can choose the kinds of social contracts they engage in, literal and figurative: intimate relationships, friendships, jobs, and yes, being a student at an institute of higher learning.

I would like to address here the specific social contract surrounding the professoriate, course subject matter, the institution and the student.

An institute of higher learning creates systems of social order that has intrinsic and extrinsic values: administration, faculty governance, tenure, academic freedom, codes of conduct, etc. Some of these aspects are spelled out as written policy. Some are inferred and suggested, but difficult to define, such as “collegiality, mutual respect”, etc.

 The trust placed in the professoriate, while debatable at a higher plane (should universities even have tenure, or even professors?) is still extant in our world today. The professor is engaged to instruct, but the content, manner of delivery and assessments required are left up to the teacher. This is the core area of the educational contract an institution engages in with a teacher. In fact, it is spelled out in my personal contract with the university. A student, registering for a class, whether required or not, needs to recognize that the instructor operates within this set of values and codes. There are clear mechanisms in place should this contract become controversial: grade appeals processes, the office of the Ombud, departmental and college level interventions, etc.

 However, it should be noted that the fundamental premise on which an entire system of education is built, namely the interaction between the instructor, the course material and the student is left to the discretion of the professor, and is should be provided in a course syllabus on the first cay of class.

 It is my assertion here that this relationship, even with the many mechanisms set in place to monitor it, is a critical social contract that is of the essence of education: the idea that one who is deemed to have more knowledge, methodology and technique is engaged in teaching the student about these things, by pedagogical processes the instructor has designed. 

 As a society, we are currently engaged in an fantastical era of micro-engineering: how shall we provide all things to all people at all times, so that we can better serve the needs and wants of all peoples at all times for all things? From personal technology to media availability, from legislation to language usage, from Starbucks beverage choices to political policies, parties and candidates, the word of our time is “everything for everyone”. In some ways this customization of the world is remarkable, in some ways it is dangerous.

Beneath this word, there lurks an insidious subtext. While I am an advocate for our desire in society for inclusion, diversity and righting historical wrongs in order to move towards “ a more perfect union”, I am also aware that the impulse towards inclusion also masks a societal malady of “need narcissism”. That is, how we as a society have subconsciously decided that instead of engaging in the larger and more complex questions surrounding issues, we have decided to assuage potential difficulties through legislation, codes, rules, caveats, notices, policy memos, signs on walls, engage in social behavior modification via seminars, workshops, sessions, guest speakers, etc. etc. etc. so that everyone can be served all of the time. Think of the emergence of massive retail boxes like Wal-Mart, the American shopping mall, etc.

I point to this tendency in our time to microengineer every problem we face as a symptom of a larger cultural malaise and even historical marker: when a society is seen by the rank and file of its citizens as an organization designed to serve the needs of the individual over the needs of the commons, then commonality of experience becomes alien and unwanted. Discomfort is shunned. Crisis is to be avoided. Frustration is to be alleviated.

Images of the Holocaust are difficult to view. The subject of the Holocaust is difficult to teach. The ideas behind the Holocaust are difficult to comprehend. The legacy of the Holocaust is difficult to define. Yet we must teach it. We must learn it. We must encounter it. We must face it. We must be shamed by it. We must be traumatized by it. We must be triggered by it. We must, for if we do not, we are doomed.

 To conclude, I believe in the almost sacred social contract that exists between the subject, the content, the teacher and the student. I believe in the trust necessary to create a meaningful learning environment. If that trust is violated though personal enmity or agendas, there are mechanisms in place to address this.  If these mechanisms are faulty, they should be repaired. I believe that students should be made aware when they enter the academy that there will be moments of elation and joy, as well as moments of trauma and pain in the classroom. I believe the institution, as the frame of the society by and for which we are gathered in the name of a university has the responsibility to announce to its citizens the culture in which they have chosen to inhabit.

 Finally, I believe that if we begin the process of microengineering our classrooms and prejudging every scenario in order to alleviate potential stresses, we no longer need teachers and students and subject matters as we know them.

 Perhaps this is the long narrative at work here, an utter transformation in the relationship of the student to the university. Already we see the words “consumer” and “customer” being used to describe students, so perhaps it will not be long before teachers become shopkeepers, offering their most palatable and well packaged products to fulfill the ever increasing personal needs of the micro-person.