Remembering those Dog Days of Summer . . . or What I Did Over My Summer Vacation

They say that when one door closes, another opens.  Read about my personal predicament of joining the ranks of the unemployed in an article published in the November 2011 issue of Incite/Insight. 

I hope it will provide a little inspiration for anyone facing challenges in this [non-existent] job market and that there is light at the end of the tunnel:

As an educator, summers were always a time to leisurely pursue professional enrichment, read junk novels, and capture the calm breezes of the season. Not unlike T.S. Eliot’s Prufrock whose life was “measured in coffee spoons,” my teacher’s existence was structured into 42-minute segments, 5 days a week, 10 months a year, carefully pacing myself to the next day off to re-boot my energy. This inner balance worked for me for over 30 years. When I left teaching behind to pursue other goals, it was challenging, yet thrilling. How would I monitor the next 30 years of my life?

Using the lyrics from the Spice Girls’ “Wannabe” tune as a source of inspiration, I sought to reinvent myself with each new endeavor with the query: So, tell me what you want, what you really really want? With every new day, I wanted ...

To be a college professor!

To devise a new curriculum!

To serve as an education director for arts organizations!

To present workshops at conferences!

To teach teachers!

To work with young people and promote their voices through playwriting!

As I successfully transitioned from one creative pursuit to the next, I finally landed a job as an education director; no sooner did I begin to savor the challenges of this career phase when the position was eliminated due to budget constraints in March of 2011. I should have seen it coming; the handwriting was on the wall: continued budget cuts, declining arts funding, selectively competitive grant awards. Schools, though supportive, were unable to allot monies and relinquish class time for arts programming. Despite acknowledging its merits, schools perceive such programs as “extras” and they easily become targeted to reduce expenses with the rationale that donations from philanthropic patrons would replace any losses. Sounds like a feasible compromise until you begin to think about the long-term effects. I’ll come back to that dilemma, later. Stay with me.

So, here I was, at age 60, unemployed with a Ph.D. and over 30 years teaching experience, with no prospects, or so it felt at the time—after all, this was during the highest unemployment rate in our nation’s recent history. In this economic downturn, who would hire me at this stage of my life? I sulked … for an entire week lapsing into a regimen of eating Mallomars with a quart of milk. After glutting myself with such internal pleasures, I took a step back and asked: So tell me what you want, what you really really want?

Within the soul of every teacher lies a deep commitment to making our world a better place to live in by educating our future citizens—those young minds whose imagination and talent shape the next generation. It has always been my strong belief that the arts define our humanity, and that they are an empowering supernatural gift given to us in order to make our world a richer better place to live.

So. Now. What. Are. You. Going. To. Do?

It was time to put my [unemployment] money where my mouth was and take charge. Subverting all fears aside, “What makes you think you can make a difference?” echoed in my psyche. I was reminded how I used it as a mantra for all my students—why not for me?

After an acting stint in an Off-Broadway production of The Vagina Monologues, I realized the only way to move forward and effectively utilize my time and talent would be through the creation of a professional website. Thus began an arduous two-month examination of the scope and scale of my career arc. As a result of this self-reflection, I was able to define my next challenge: to authenticate the arts and alter its perception as an amenity. I started to collect stories of artists “in the trenches,” so to speak, who were making things work and garnering amazing outcomes: 12-year-old Olivia Bouler of Islip, Long Island, who raised more than $175,000 for the Audubon Society; an Artspace loft to energize Patchogue, Long Island; the Airmid Theatre Company working with New York Assemblyman Steven Englebright to create a permanent theatre space on the sprawling former grounds of the Kings Park Psychiatric Center.

On a national scale, I was horrified and outraged by a particular story related by Erika Nelson, an artist in Lucas, KS who makes miniature models of giant pieces of Americana, puts them in a van, and drives around the country to show people. She called her mobile museum “The World’s Largest Collection of the World’s Smallest Versions of the World’s Largest Things.” But this year, Kansas, which has one of the country’s smallest state arts budgets, decided to shrink it even further, to zero, cutting off all of Nelson’s state support. This was just one story among many. While national advocacy groups fight to keep the arts as a core mission of the government, the rising sentiment is that it’s an optional staple of sustenance. Instead of taking polite nibbles to offset this spiraling trend, I decided to bite back!

Since the launch of my website in late August, I’ve initiated The First 100 Stories Campaign, entered blogs on subjects ranging from literacy, CORE standards, and professional development, and proposed an education program for class field trips to the 9-11 memorial. Additionally, I conducted two interviews for First Online With Fran: a talk show solely dedicated to honoring ordinary people doing extraordinary things in the arts to make our world a deeper, better place to live. Sounds lofty, doesn’t it?

Alas, it’s the stuff that dreams are made of.

And THAT is what I did over my summer vacation.

More to come. Stay tuned.

Frances McGarry, Ph.D. has been teaching theatre for more than 30 years. The Young Playwrights Festival in New York City became the subject of her doctoral dissertation in the Program of Educational Theater at New York University. She has presented Young Playwrights Inc.’s Write A Play! curriculum at local, regional, and national conferences. Her new website, www.francesmcgarry.com offers discussions on how practitioners are utilizing the arts to make our world a richer, deeper better place to live.