The Professor

Recently, one of my university theater professors passed away. I've been thinking about him, how amazing he was, how lucky I was to know and work with him.

Let's start with how I knew him. See, that description up above is a bit misleading; yes, he was "mine" as in someone that I studied under, and I enjoyed his company, very much. He was a university professor. But I was not a university student.

Auditions at the university are "open;" anyone can audition (but casting preference is given to students). One of my best friends convinced me to go with him the first time we auditioned; I'm forever grateful.

I got some of my best acting roles there from Dr. Bob Dillard, head of the theater department. He was elegant, slender, funny, acerbic, insanely talented, well read, better educated than I would ever be. He was great at keeping appropriate boundaries while still hanging out with teens and 20-somethings. I was 18 when I met him.

When I was 19, he cast me in "Evita." I was not confident about my singing. My mother had a beautiful voice, and I loved singing, but I was very insecure about letting anyone hear. I told people that I didn't sing, that "you don't want to hear me sing." My family and friends weren't big cheerleaders; the first time my high school did a musical, my father said to me, "What are you gonna do in a musical?" when I told him about the show. Stung, I said, "They need technicians!"

"Oh. I guess that makes sense," he said.

The only reason I tried out for "Evita" is that it had a huge chorus. I could "hide" my voice in the group.

During rehearsals, I learned to sing out, to project. I wasn't ready to play Eva, but I was then comfortable with being an actor who sings.

Later, I also joined my church choir. I can sing the "gloria" part of "Angels We Have Heard On High" in one breath, without sounding gaspy. (Unless my asthma is kicking my butt.)

"Evita" made possible every musical that I was in afterward, musicals where I had solos and a headset microphone. Years later, when I was in a large show, the vocal director pulled a large group over to me during rehearsal and said, "Listen to Sharon. Follow what she does."

I am a singer. That never would have happened without Bob Dillard.

Before I met him, one of his apparently standard admonitions had become legendary - in a musical, the cast was to "Sparkle, dammit, sparkle!" I adopted the phrase for non-theater use; my kids are familiar with it.

There are other phrases that so spoke to me that I still check my work, and my life, against them.

My taste in entertainment (and life) runs to squeaky clean. Still, I know that not everything will be G rated, and that's OK - in fact, it's desirable. I love crime shows, murder mystery books, serial killer trivia. So, I save my ire for things that I find unnecessary. For instance: Mel Gibson makes great historical pieces, but he loves gore too much for my taste; I usually watch his stuff after it's been "cut for TV." David Mamet is brilliant, but probably couldn't order breakfast without dropping four or five f-bombs. I don't mind most of the nudity in "Schindler's List," because I know what Spielberg is trying to say (even though I think that there are less revealing ways to do it). I do mind Amon Goeth's girlfriend being naked and throwing things at him so that we get to see her bounce. Put her in a negligee and the scene still works.

Sometimes, the university theater department would produce things that pushed certain boundaries. I rarely had to sit a show out because it pushed too far for me. And, since I think I'm pretty picky, I usually think that if I'm not bothered, no reasonable person should be.

I don't remember what show we were working on when someone asked Dr. Dillard if he was worried about offending people. While I don't remember the show, I remember the moment, the room we were in, and I remember the smile that spread across his face at the question. "No," he said. "I'm not."

"But what if they, like, complain to the university president? What if they write letters and stuff?"

Here's where he dropped that piece of wisdom that so spoke to me. "If we're not offending somebody, we're not doing our jobs," he said. Each of us has people we're willing to offend, and people we'd rather not offend, and it's not only impossible but dangerous to try to avoid offending anyone, ever. Draw your line in the sand, and stand by it. He encapsulated something I already believed in, in a compact sentence. It was brilliance.

I also remembering being giddily grateful to him on a personal level for the way he handled a conversation that had gotten uncomfortable for me.

There was a group of us sitting in the "green room," the lounge area under the stage where we hung out during rehearsals when we personally weren't working. We were going through the whole "getting to know you" thing of asking each other about our lives and backgrounds - where were we from, where we'd gone to high school, that sort of thing.

One girl said that she'd graduated from a local school. "Hey, me too!" I told her. That led to asking what year, who we both knew that had gone to high school with us, and so on. She'd graduated 5 or 6 years after I did.

"Who was your theater teacher?" she asked. It's a really ordinary question, especially under the circumstances, but I was unprepared for it, and I just froze. I'm a pretty open book, I lean toward TMI, but I just stared at her for an uncomfortable few seconds, then said, "I'm sorry. You've just hit on one of the very few areas of my life that I don't talk about."

"WHAT? What? Who was it?"

"Nope. Sorry."

"What happened? What did you do?" She kept asking, and I kept saying no. See, when you don't want to discuss things, people assume that there's a scandal. They want the dirt - they want to hear something salacious. This is just something that I discuss rarely, and I only discuss in detail with people who were there. I'm not hiding, I'm not embarrassed. It's just so uncomfortable that I'd rather not do it. My kids know this teacher as She Who Shall Not Be Named. They wouldn't recognize her name if they heard it.

But this poor girl was just convinced that there was a great story, a big scandal - and that I undoubtedly did something wrong - and she kept pushing. Finally, she looked at Dr. Dillard. "Do you know?" she demanded. I had no idea if he did or didn't. I'd certainly never discussed it with him.

He looked at me, right in my eyes. If he wanted to say, I couldn't stop him (and I wouldn't have). Then he looked at her and said, "Yes, I do. And I know why she doesn't talk about it."

Oh, the relief! The validation, that I didn't have to say if I didn't want to! I was just so overwhelmingly grateful.

I sincerely have no idea what he knew or didn't know. I never asked. It's entirely possible that he had heard some wildly inaccurate stories that cast me as a criminal mastermind or some such thing. I don't know if he actually even knew her name or not. All I knew in that moment was that he had my back. Even if there had been nothing else about him that I liked, this single incident would have assured that I thought of him fondly forever.

I wish that I could remember more about the last time that I worked with him. Unfortunately, something that still ranks as the worst thing that ever happened to me happened during that show. Trauma tends to stain everything, even unrelated things, so even though I actively tried not to associate the show, the people, the theater, plays in general, or anything else of the sort, with the trauma, it didn't work very well. It took 10 years for me to attend a show in that theater again; I have still never worked there since that show.

It's really a shame, because it was a great show, and a great part, the best part I'd ever had at the university. I always got the sense that Dr. D believed in me, and enjoyed my work. My husband assures me that I did a great job, and none of my friends ever told me that the performance stunk, so that's good. I assume that the show didn't suffer. Still, I'd like to have the memories back. Maybe they'll show up some day.

I saw Dr. Dillard occasionally after that. I sent him Christmas cards for years. Still, we never worked together again, and he eventually retired.

Last year, I was at a theater gathering, and had the chance to write something in a notebook for Dr. Dillard (who couldn't attend). Enough of my loved ones have passed away that I'm getting pretty effusive in expressing my feelings to people. You never know when they'll need to hear it, or when they'll be gone.

I don't remember what I wrote. It was probably inadequate and silly. It was only half a page or so. Still, I knew - I may never be in the same room with this friend again, and I need to let him know how amazing he is. He needs to know that I remember; the shows he cast me in, the things he taught me, how he backed me up when I wanted my personal life to remain personal.

He sparkled.

Now it's our turn. "Sparkle, dammit!"