Personal Statement

My grandmother, Annie was a seanchai, an Irish storyteller. She was the only great actor I have known intimately. Her stage was the kitchen of her cottage in the West of Ireland and her stories were about her friends and neighbors. She recreated their trials and triumphs and with her talent for mimicry accorded each a speaking part. Her one woman show held me spellbound. She commanded my tears and fits of laughter depending on the content of her story or dictated by a whim. It was she who made me stage-struck years before I even saw a stage.

I was thirteen before I acted my first conventional role. My high school English teacher, Mrs. Doyle, directed us in Strindberg's Motherlove. I played the mother. We explored the work in class and interpreted it aloud in rehearsal after school. We wrote papers and memorized text, learning the language of our character. In her classroom and on her stage, we played Chekov, Wilde, Coward, O'Casey and Shakespeare. Just as my grandmother revealed to me the drama of theater, Mrs. Doyle introduced me to its literature.

During my sophomore year, I acted in Ionesco's The Bald Soprano. After I read it in French as La Cantatrice Chauve, I was never again content with a translation. The next year, I directed my classmates in a French speaking production which we performed for the school. My insights into literature and language came always through my exploration of both on the stage.

It was a novelist and not a playwright, however, who was to have the most significant influence on my later course of study. The assignment was to read an American author who had not been discussed in class. Rather by chance, I chose Isaac Bashevis Singer from a long list. His densely populated narratives complete with demons and ghosts reminded me of the stories of my grandmother. The self deprecating wit prevalent throughout his works was reminiscent of the Irish sense of humor. I read every one of his books available in our school library and then moved on to the Boston Public Library where I discovered the story telling gifts of his brother I.J. Singer and his contemporary, Chaim Grade. Having exhausted the English language collection of Yiddish writers, I became determined to explore their works in their original form.

Upon entering university, I decided to concentrate my studies on the language and literature of Yiddish. Although no Yiddish courses were offered at Boston University, the University Professor's Program allowed me to design my own course of study. I studied Yiddish and Hebrew at Hebrew College, the National Yiddish Book Center, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Harvard University.

It was Yiddish and another dynamic teacher that pointed me again toward the theater. Last year in what was to be the most exciting and challenging course of my college career, I studied Yiddish theater with Professor Ruth Wisse. My deepest understanding of the Yiddish language and literature came from her class. She began her lecture by putting a play in context and placing its author in world literature. The second half of class was devoted to reading carefully prepared works aloud with each student playing a different role. She pushed and prodded us until we came up with an intelligent and original understanding of that week's play.

I was researching a paper for this class when I met Luba Kadison, one of the great actors of the Yiddish stage. Now in her eighties and living in New York City, Mrs. Kadison has performed in Romania, Poland, Russia, England and in North and South America. She has studied in Polish, has performed in Yiddish, speaks Russian and English in a rich and textured voice. When she spoke to me in Yiddish, I had never heard a language sound more beautiful. When she spoke of the modern theater, the overproduction, ineffectual mixture of styles, the lack of cultivated actors, I was struck by the authority of her sense of tradition. She seemed to me to be the ideal artist: talented, educated and critical.

Presently, I direct a group of ten to twelve year old girls in Dorchester, Massachusetts. Most of them are first generation Haitian-Americans or immigrants themselves. Their natural reading of and response to a work teaches me more about their culture and environment than I have taught them about acting.

I will continue to perform and to teach. Whether it be on a stage or in a classroom, theater will be my medium. I am certain only in the broadest sense, however, what my subject matter is to be. I plan to explore and introduce literature that is not popularly being performed on stage. There are a few goals that I particularly hope to realize throughout the course of my career: to act professionally in both Yiddish and Irish as well as in English and to adapt and direct Chaim Grade's novel and the subject of my thesis, My Mother's Sabbath Days.

Before I can do this, however, I need to develop a firm foundation in traditional theater. I would like to train formally as an actor. For a number of reasons, I hope to study in England. As well as being accustomed to training students from diverse backgrounds and cultures, there, the emphasis is on preparation for a theatrical career as opposed to one in film or television. What draws me most to the English theater schools, however, and indeed to England, itself, is their appreciation and mastery of comedy. Comedy is the most difficult and exciting aspect of performance; it is also the most entertaining. After I complete my training, I plan to gain experience working professionally as an actor. Eventually, like my grandmother, I hope to have a theater of my own.

Proposal

The approach to literature that gives me the most reward has been to memorize a text and then interpret it aloud. Acting in theatrical productions has lead me to a deep appreciation and understanding of French and Yiddish culture. Similarly, exposure to Gaelic theater has enhanced my own sense of the Irish literary tradition. Through performance, language that was lost since my early childhood came alive in all of its musicality and beauty.

I seek an experience that would foster an intellectual as well as an artistic approach to theater. This is the mission of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts and the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. Both institutions have carefully structured Dramatic programs that are all inclusive. They are artistic, academic and practical.

Students perform in productions from all facets of world drama. They act Sophocles and Pirandello as well as Shakespeare. They are instructed in "the method" but not to the exclusion of other acting styles. They are directed to research the historical, geographical and social background of each play. Moreover, they are assigned challenging projects and are required to develop their own texts adapted from non theatrical literature.

Technical training makes up the greatest part of each program. Students study voice, movement and improvisation. While working with established theaters during their last year, they learn the practical side of forming their own companies, including booking, touring, sponsorship, budgeting, funding and targeting an audience.

I plan to continue my exploration of world cultures through the universal medium of theater. RADA and Guildhall will provide me with the tools to do so. England - from the Globe in the sixteenth century to the BBC today - has a long history of producing magnificent theater that is accessible to all of its people. I hope to learn from this tradition and through my work bring to light literature and language that has yet to become part of popular culture. One of the stated goals of the Marshall Scholarship is to enable Americans "to gain an understanding and appreciation of the British way of life." I can think of no better way to fulfill this plan than to explore one of England's great institutions - the theater.