Season 7: Episode 9 Transcript
Lessons from the Stage
Lee Coffin:
From Hanover, New Hampshire, I'm Lee Coffin, Dartmouth's vice president and dean of admissions and financial aid, and this is Admissions Beat.
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It occurred to me as Season Seven rolled along and the 100th episode is on the horizon that we've covered a lot of topics on the Admissions Beat, but we have not dedicated a full conversation to the extracurricular part of high school and college admissions.
Today I was inspired to bring that into our story by my own high school English teacher, drama club director, and his sidekick wife, who are writing a book called Lessons from the Stage, kind of reflections from all of us who shared that stage with them over more than 30 years. And I thought, "I'm bringing them to Hanover." And in a weird twist of "This Is My Life," I have two guests today that have known me since I was 14. When we come back, we will meet these very important figures in my own story, and we will think about the lessons from the stage, or the lessons from a field, or the lessons from a lab, or the lessons from a church youth group that help us understand who we are and where we're going. So, we'll be right back.
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It's exciting to welcome Gary and Fran Scarpa to Admissions Beat. Hi.
Fran Scarpa:
Hi.
Gary Scarpa:
Hi.
Lee Coffin:
I caught myself this morning being more nervous than usual about this recording, and I was wondering like, "Why is that true?" And it occurred to me that it's I'm nervous because you made me. It's one of those moments where you look to your history and someone who had a really important role in helping me become the person I am today is here in the studio with me. And for listeners, Gary Scarpa was a longtime English teacher at Shelton High School, my alma mater in Connecticut. He was both my teacher for honors sophomore English, where he does a mean performance of Boo Radley from "To Kill a Mockingbird." And his wife, Francesca, Fran, to all of us who know her, was his co-director, choreographer, vocal coach for the Shelton High School Drama Club for many, many, many years.
They founded a couple of youth-oriented community theater groups, the Youth Connection. I was in their first performance in the summer of 1983. We did "West Side Story"—we'll come back to that in a minute, because there's a lesson from that performance that endures all these years later. And then they went on to form Center Stage, which continues in Shelton, Connecticut. So excited to have you both here.
Fran Scarpa:
As are we excited to be here with you-
Gary Scarpa:
We are thrilled to be here.
Lee Coffin:
Just because my audience will be curious, what was I like in high school?
Fran Scarpa:
Quiet at first. When we first met Lee he was a little reserved, but he was always very focused. You were always very focused and real. A very real kid, just enjoying the moment of being around other kids and doing something that everybody was going to come out with a great product at the end. You were always warm, hanging out at our house as you got a little older. And yeah, just a really wonderful person to be around. You still are.
Lee Coffin:
I did seven shows with the Scarpas during high school. Every show that was available during those four years, usually one in the fall, one in the spring, one fall there was a baby. So, there was no show in that fall.
Fran Scarpa:
There was indeed.
Lee Coffin:
But I start there, because when I think about the book Gary's writing, Lessons from the Stage, it has invited me to be thinking a lot about the lessons I took from those performances. And I think, tying this back to college admission, when you fill out the extracurricular section of the application, it's not just a list of activities, it's your story. And from that story we pull clues about who we are, where we're going, what's important, what are our talents. Gary, as you, you're writing this book, Lessons from the Stage, what prompted you to write this?
Gary Scarpa:
I've been out of education for 13 years this June, and we retired from our work in theater six years ago, and COVID hit, we retired in 2019, and we all know about COVID, unfortunately. After COVID hit, Fran, and my daughter, who was home from New York—she was living in New York and came home during COVID—and they said, "Can't go anywhere, can't do anything. You always wanted to write. Why don't you start writing?" So, I started writing fiction, and since then in these five years or so I've published three works of fiction. And I thought I'd try my hand at nonfiction, and I wanted to celebrate our 43 years. Fran and I directed local theater in the lower Naugatuck Valley for 43 years. And it was literally our whole life.
I joked with someone who was painting some rooms in my house right after we directed. I said to him, "I didn't used to live here." He said, "Oh, I thought you lived here for a long time." And I said, "No, Fran and I used to sleep here, but we didn't live here."
Fran Scarpa:
We didn't live here.
Gary Scarpa:
We didn't live in this house, we lived at rehearsal. And so, I just was inspired to celebrate all those years doing local theater, amateur theater.
Lee Coffin:
And how many shows do you think you directed over 43 years?
Gary Scarpa:
I would say roughly 200.
Lee Coffin:
200 high school-aged performances?
Gary Scarpa:
No, also, at Center Stage—we had a complete theater program for kids from five years old to kids to 75 years old. We were a full-time theater, not a professional theater, but an amateur theater. And so we had a full season of plays with adults, so age-appropriate casts. And then we had certainly a very active teen program and even an education program for younger children. It was a really busy place.
Lee Coffin:
And so you're writing about it, and I learned about it through a post you had on Facebook where you invited all of us who were in a show at any point to start to share the lessons of that. And you know, I have not said this yet, but you can transcribe what I'm about to say. I think all the time about the work I do as a college admission officer and how the foundation of it is performance. When I do an info session or a talk, when we work with tour guides, I mean, we are performing. And I go back to Shelton High School, and that time you directed me, whether I was in the chorus, whether I had a one-line part my senior year when I had one of the leads.
All of those different ways of being on a stage and watching myself evolve from the quiet kid Fran remembers from the fall of '77 to the chatterbox that I am today, I credit with drama club. Because it really did give me a jolt of confidence. I don't know that I lacked confidence, but it changed me in a really clear way.
Gary Scarpa:
Yeah.
Fran Scarpa:
I think too, if I think back about you, Lee, I think that it woke up in you, that extrovert personality that was in there. But theater, I think gave you that opportunity to explore that more and to be more comfortable in your own skin, and then to be able to be who you are. And theater has a way of doing that, or the arts have a way of doing that.
Gary Scarpa:
We saw that happen again and again and again, starting from the first play in 1976, right through the end in 2019, we saw theater work its magic on people. I don't mean that in a cliche kind of way, the magic of theater, I just mean, bring young people, teenagers, confidence that they didn't have before they stood on a stage and sang or any of that.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah. If you're a high school junior and just starting to explore college options, and then a few months from now you're going to have to tell a story about yourself to those colleges, I mean, how do you see the lessons from this drama space informing that of exploration now and then the storytelling later? I mean, what advice would you give an 11th grader?
Gary Scarpa:
I also want to begin answering that question, and I know Fran would have a lot to say about that too-
Fran Scarpa:
You were a guidance counselor for a lot of years.
Gary Scarpa:
I was a guidance counselor for half of my career, so I taught-
Lee Coffin:
I don't think I knew that.
Gary Scarpa:
Yeah. I did-
Lee Coffin:
After I left?
Gary Scarpa:
I did 34 years in the public school, and the first 16 I was an English teacher. In the second 16 I was a guidance counselor. I broke it up into two-
Lee Coffin:
Yowzee. That's even better.
Fran Scarpa:
A revelation.
Gary Scarpa:
Yeah. I was advising and guiding, I think, and I loved ... If you said, "What did you love to do most as a guidance counselor?" I would say, "The college application process. The college essay particularly." And I love to help kids find their essay. And so, if someone came to me a junior and they wanted to write about theater, I wanted them to find a really personal experience, or theater or anything, football or whatever. I didn't want a football player or a theater kid or whoever to write an essay that just anybody or everybody could write. I wanted them to find a very personal story that they had in that activity. That kind of is my initial answer. Did you want to say something, Fran?
Fran Scarpa:
Yeah, well, a couple of things. We could talk about this forever. So many lessons to be learned from being involved in the arts in general. But one thing is that we as theater artists are telling somebody else's story. We are involved in really looking at the words, how they're used, what those words convey to us as human beings, and what we bring to that as humans. I don't know if you remember this, Lee, but I used to like hold the script up and say, "Hey, this is just a piece of paper here." And that's, it can sit there forever and nobody's going to know what's in there. We are the ones that are privileged to look at this work and to honor this work, these people that have created this, and to be true to that and to bring ourselves to that. And to look at the director's intention, for how the vision for how that director wants us to do it.
In public speaking or in teaching, in admissions and whatever that platform is that you end up in,. we always end up sort of having to say something to a group of people. All those skills of inviting the audience into the world that we create as theater artists works the same way. Aren't you wanting the admissions directors or the people that are reading your application to say, "I know something about this kid's world, not just what they did, but how they used those skills in whatever extracurriculars they were involved in, to grow and learn and form them as human beings." When our daughter, Mia was applying to Muhlenberg College in Pennsylvania, she wrote her essay—because theater and dance, she was a ballerina, were very important to her—she wrote about going to the Plumb Memorial Library when she was a child with me and reading A Very Young Dancer many, many, many, many times. We would go to the library, get the same book, she'd come home, she'd read it, about a young girl who's auditioned for the New York City Ballet Nutcracker.
And she also would sit with me and watch full-length ballets like Giselle, which are kind of dark and kind of serious. And at three years old she would sit on my lap and watch those. And she had the attention to sit and watch all of that. The ballet school that she was at was doing a production of "Romeo and Juliet." She would have loved to have played Juliet professionally or unprofessionally, just to do that role. And she had had a number of disappointments in the ballet world, and she wanted to dance Juliet. She pushed all her furniture aside in her bedroom and full-on danced the role of Juliet. And at the end of it she was laying on her floor sobbing, but she said, "Now, I've danced Juliet, I can let go of this." That's what she decided to write about in her essay.
And I thought that was a great way for people to really understand how important that experience of theater and dance was to her. And also give an insight into her processing disappointment and what does it mean to be successful or not, and all of that. So, yeah.
Gary Scarpa:
Which are lessons from the stage.
Fran Scarpa:
All lessons.
Lee Coffin:
And I was just going to say that as you're sharing Mia's story, that's exactly the point. It's not just write ballet on the extracurricular page of the application and maybe say prima ballerina and like, okay, that's a fact, that's not a story.
Fran Scarpa:
Correct. Yes. And we do that, as an actor, I've worn a lot of different hats, and as a performer, as an actor, as a singer, I want to look at that audience as me. You are me, I am you. I want to invite you in. I want to say, "Hey, listen, here's a great song by this composer. Maybe you don't know this song. I'm going to share this with you. See if these lyrics resonate with you too. And let me tell you who it was sung by. Maybe you don't know this artist. Let me introduce this artist to you too." It's more than just standing here presenting something to somebody. It's a reciprocal relationship where we want to enter that in together. "Come with me, come be part of this tradition. Let me invite you into this world." And then you're there with me, the audience is there with us.
Lee Coffin:
Well, and it's such a great parallel to a college application. Because the best ones do the same thing you just described, that a student on a stage will do. You're telling your story, but you're bringing it forward through these different elements, and not just letting it lie there as a flat document, but you're giving it some sparkle. Let's help students think about taking that selfie, looking at themselves. They've been in the arts in high school, they haven't yet put their finger as high school juniors on, what does this mean? I'm looking back 40 years and remembering this. But if you're an 11th grader, it's a much more current moment of like, "Okay, what is my lesson, Gary?" What would be ... How would you invite them to start pondering that? Or to a parent who is watching, like my mom did. I would do a performance and she'd say, "Who are you?" I'd say, "I just popped like Jiffy Pop popcorn. It just happened." What's the way a parent or a junior can start having this reflection?
Gary Scarpa:
That's a good question. I mean, I think they're beginning to discover themselves at that age, don't you? I mean, I think when we're in high school it's the real beginning of discovery, which is taken to another level, at least it was for me in college. In fact, a recent work of fiction that I wrote called Still Life is very much about that. About discovering what's going on and what my place in the world is. For me, if I could just answer this question partly by using myself. I grew up in the '60s and graduated from high school in 1970, and I realized actually at a performance of a show maybe when I was 25, called "Beatlemania," that I'm sure you've heard of, that had a multimedia presentation. That showed Civil War protests, Vietnam protests, assassinations, those assassinations, all of that history of the '60s.
I thought, "Wow, when I was 15 or 16 and younger, I was completely missing this." I mean, I knew that Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King were killed, but I was worried about who I was going to take to the prom, not whether Bobby Kennedy was killed. You're young and you're trying to discover yourself, and I think that the beginning of that happens in really meaningful activities. And really your successes and failures in high school. And those successes and failures in our world had to do with maybe getting the part you wanted in a play, or not getting it. And sometimes, obviously, people didn't get it.
Lee Coffin:
Well, and that disappointment is important too, because you don't always get what you want.
Gary Scarpa:
No, it's a fact of life. And nowhere is it more prevalent, in my opinion, than in theater. And so, I mean, you do this work in college admissions where you have to accept and not accept people to be students here at Dartmouth. And same thing with a play. I mean, Fran and I would sit down and we had, I mean this is, I'm sure a simpler version of what you do. But we might have 100 kids who audition and we want 40 or 50, and we have a yes pile. Yes, yes. No, no. Maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, yes, maybe, maybe, maybe. And we end up with this big maybe pile and this little yes pile and this little no pile. And now we have to work through the maybes and disappoint people. And it's heartbreaking.
Fran Scarpa:
It's awful.
Gary Scarpa:
It was my least favorite thing about doing theater. But it's a really important part of the growing process for high school kids if this is their activity.
Lee Coffin:
Well, as you were describing the maybes and the yeses and the no's, that is exactly what I do for most of February and March. The yeses are a small pile. The no's are a small pile, and the maybes are the big pile. And you have to shape-
Gary Scarpa:
It's so hard.
Lee Coffin:
You're shaping a cast, I'm shaping a class.
Fran Scarpa:
Yes.
Lee Coffin:
And you're going into that middle group of possibles and figuring out who goes where. And I think from the student point of view, as you're thinking about how do you pull the lesson from this and use it in college admissions. I remember, well, I remember a lot of things about working with you, but I remember that it was the fall of my freshman year. I had auditioned just on a whim. I had no idea that I was going to do drama club in high school. And I tried out, and I remember this scrum of people looking at a bulletin board outside your room, room 230. And I didn't expect to see my name on the cast list. And there it was, the role was Man Holding a Rifle, but my name was there.
Gary Scarpa:
Hey, it was the beginning of big things to come.
Fran Scarpa:
How memorable. I remember that so clearly.
Lee Coffin:
Because it was such a silly part for me to have, because I was so skinny and little and the rifle was bigger than I was. But I was a guard in this show. And that started my journey through drama club. And I also remember years later being called back for parts that I didn't get. And I was in the chorus, not the lead that I had auditioned for. And that was a lesson that you have to take what you got and do with it something special. You taught me, Gary, I remember we were doing "Hello Dolly," and I was in the chorus. And I was not a particularly nimble dancer, so I never got…Fran, the choreographer, never put me in the front line of the dance ensemble. But I was on stage and realized, I'm telling a story by my ... I'm not just a chorus person standing there in the back singing, I'm reacting to Dolly coming down the stairs. And like those little vignettes make the stage feel alive beyond just Dolly in the middle of the stage in the spotlight. And you taught me that.
Gary Scarpa:
That was our message. And what I would say about our shows, talented kids in a high school drama club come and go. I mean, there are years where you have mega talents and years where the talent's a little thin, if I may say that. But the ensemble or the also what we might call the chorus of-
Lee Coffin:
A heartbeat-
Gary Scarpa:
... a musical-
Fran Scarpa:
A musical.
Gary Scarpa:
This is just me talking. I mean, I've never been at a high school show where I've seen a better chorus than ours. Because, and if I'm right on that, and even if I'm not right, I'm close, we emphasized it. We emphasize your importance. What we would say, you know, if anyone's a sports fan in Connecticut, they know of Dan Orlovsky who went from Shelton High School around 2002 into the pros. He won the state championship at Shelton. He was the player of the year in Connecticut, and so forth.
Lee Coffin:
He played for Lions.
Gary Scarpa:
And I would say to the kids after that ... Yeah, he played for the Lions and several other NFL teams, and now he's on ESPN as a sports analyst. And his sister was in our play so I knew the family pretty well. But I would say to our kids after, I mean, not saying the same thing before, but I would say after that, I would say, "Listen, Dan Orlovsky gets all the accolades, he gets all the glory. But if these linemen in front of him don't block, he goes nowhere. Shelton doesn't win any championships. He's not the player of the year. Those people have to do their job and they have to do it well for this team to succeed." And that was our message of teamwork, and really important message. I'm sorry, I know you're driving the conversation…
Lee Coffin:
No, that's okay.
Gary Scarpa:
But I just have to tell this.
Lee Coffin:
The danger of bringing my high school drama director into the ... Like I am not the lead role here.
Gary Scarpa:
I have to tell this story though. In our second year, the first year we did "West Side Story," these are summer plays for high school and college students. We expanded our work to college. And we did "Bye Bye Birdie" the second year. And the lead male role is Albert Peterson. And so, we saw the audition, we had a callback, and we called you and John Glenn, who works in Washington, D.C. and just, he's doing great stuff in Washington, D.C. You were both called back for Albert Peterson. You were our two finalists, our two callbacks.
Fran Scarpa:
He nods his head.
Gary Scarpa:
He nods his head. The dean of admissions nods his head. Yeah. Fran and I would go home and we wouldn't always agree, but we were equal partners in this. We were very much equal partners. We're sitting there and Fran said, "I think Lee Coffin should play Albert Peterson." And I said, "I think John Glenn's got to play Albert Peterson." We would then discuss, and sometimes it got a little passionate, and she'd say why she thought it should be Lee, and I'd say why I thought it should be John. We couldn't come to an agreement that night. I said, "You know what? Let's just sleep on it. Let's go to bed. We'll talk about it tomorrow morning again."
We did that. We woke up in the morning and I said, "Hey, you know," I said, "I was thinking about it, and you're right, Lee should play the role." And she said, "I was thinking about it too, and I think John should play the role now." So we reversed our decision. But the big point that I want to make was that if you were disappointed about not getting the role, you never showed it to me. I remember-
Lee Coffin:
I was very disappointed.
Fran Scarpa:
I'm sure you were.
Gary Scarpa:
I remember somebody who was able to accept that disappointment and move on like that, like that.
Lee Coffin:
Well, it's, to the point of your-
Gary Scarpa:
I didn't even know.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah. Because-
Gary Scarpa:
Years later I knew.
Lee Coffin:
... you don't always get the part.
Fran Scarpa:
Right.
Gary Scarpa:
It's just how it is.
Lee Coffin:
And a lesson I took from that, not only did I not get the lead, I got a teeny tiny-
Gary Scarpa:
The mayor.
Lee Coffin:
No, I was the father of like, I can't-
Gary Scarpa:
Sorry.
Lee Coffin:
... Arnie Johnson. But I remember at the end of the show you said to me, "You took this really tiny choral part and created a character around it."
Gary Scarpa:
Yeah.
Fran Scarpa:
Yes.
Lee Coffin:
And that was my lesson, it's like, "Okay, I didn't get to be the lead. I'm going to do what I can do with this part." And that listeners, I think you should think about these examples in your own storytelling. It's easy to always win. It's easy, you're not all going to be the valedictorian of your class. And how do you perform, how do you learn, how do you grow from what you have? And like that lesson for me from this "Bye Bye Birdie" example-
Gary Scarpa:
I love that.
Lee Coffin:
... is, let me take this tiny most, I don't even think I had a line, but I was pantomiming apart. And you noticed it, you said, at the end of the thing you said, "You turned that little thing into a gig."
Gary Scarpa:
And not a great many, but through the years some people would have chosen to drop out of the show.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah.
Gary Scarpa:
"I was there for this role, I didn't get it. I'm out."
Fran Scarpa:
I'm out.
Gary Scarpa:
Instead of taking what they did get and making the most of it. And by the way, I could name person after person who like you made the most of it. And those stories mean the most to us. I could almost cry about it. Those stories mean so much to us, because we just always hated disappointing people.
Fran Scarpa:
Yeah.
Gary Scarpa:
I mean, it was so anxiety producing to know that we had these kids and their hearts were hanging on getting this part or that part. And it was so important. And I understand from my own high school years how important, I mean for me it happened to be with sports. But being a starting basketball player or any sport, it's so important. It's too important for some people.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah. Well, and you just prompted a memory of my senior year of high school when we were doing "Oklahoma." And one of my classmates was hoping to go to college to study drama. And her father said, as we were auditioning for "Oklahoma," he said, "If you don't get the lead, I'm not paying for you to go to college." And I remember when she got the part how ecstatic she was, she was fantastic-
Gary Scarpa:
Very talented.
Lee Coffin:
But to your comment about disappointment, pressure, expectation. She was going into a high school drama club audition thinking like, "Ooh, my future swings on whether I get this part or not."
Fran Scarpa:
Wow, yeah.
Gary Scarpa:
What a story that is.
Fran Scarpa:
Yeah.
Lee Coffin:
Looking backwards, I think what the dad was saying was, "I'm not convinced drama is something you should study. If you can't get the lead in the high school play, why are we thinking about investing money?" And he was being really pragmatic, but he was also, he also put a lot of pressure on her to achieve something that was not in her control. I think there's a lesson there too parent-wise around college admission. And whether it's-
Fran Scarpa:
Nor was it really a barometer of whether or not she was going to-
Gary Scarpa:
And again, it's something I write about in the book, if I may add to this.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah, of course.
Gary Scarpa:
This is just one man's or one man and one woman's choice.
Fran Scarpa:
Thank you.
Gary Scarpa:
Her future should not rest on whether I think she should have played that role. Because if I could go back to the example of you and John for the role of Albert Peterson, you were even up, baby. I mean, either one of you could have played the role, we would have lost nothing by having you play it. Nothing. Nothing at all. That happens again and again. And the truth is, ultimately it's simply what I like. I mean, the director or the directors. Somebody's future shouldn't rest on that. Another young lady said to me, she was very talented. But she didn't get the lead. She was very talented. And she would go on to major in theater, in a conservatory program, a prominent conservatory program. She was that good. She didn't get the lead.
And she said to me, "If I can't get the lead here, how can I hope to have a professional career?" And I said, "If you can't handle rejection here, how are you going to handle rejection on a professional level?" I said, "I don't know how you could handle it. You have to be able to handle it. There's got to be a beginning to dealing with rejection. Our daughter is a professional actor and lives in a community in New York of professional actors. They get rejected every day of their lives, every day, all of them, the best of them, the most successful of them." There are all these lessons from these high school experiences, they're just profound.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah. And I don't think you see it when you're in high school.
Gary Scarpa:
No.
Lee Coffin:
You don't always know that these lessons are bubbling.
Gary Scarpa:
You're too close to it.
Lee Coffin:
You're too close to it. And I think being able to take rejection, manage disappointment, find other ways of being present in something that's important to you, those are the lessons of the stage. Those are the things I would invite an applicant to share through, whether it's the application, whether it's the interview, like bring that forward. Because I think, I've talked about having confidence. I remember we were doing a cabaret-like show, and I had my first singing role, I can't even remember what the song was, but I remember coming home from school having just been cast, and my mother looked up, she's making dinner, and my mother looked up and said, "You sing?" I said, "Yeah." That was a surprise to her, because I just otherwise was singing in the backseat of the station wagon as we drove around town.
But the reason I'm sharing this story, a lesson for me was, up until that moment when, it was a duet, singing on stage is hard. Not in a chorus, that's hard too. But when you're all by yourself having to sing a song, and I go back to that as one of those developmental moments for myself where I learned how to get over the stage fright, how to focus on the song, not the people. I remember seeing my grandmother in the audience during the performance, I don't look at grandma, like just sing. But you taught me, those were lessons about how to perform, how to be confident and composed.
Gary Scarpa:
And let's remember too, the Shelton High School auditorium seated 1,200 people.
Lee Coffin:
It's big.
Gary Scarpa:
You were singing solo in front of 1,200 people. It's not like it was a little informal [inaudible 00:34:00].
Lee Coffin:
But these are the lessons. The lessons are about improvisation. I thought the story you were going to tell from Youth Connection was West Side Story.
Gary Scarpa:
Yeah, that's-
Fran Scarpa:
That story, yeah.
Lee Coffin:
I played Gino, it's the end of the play. I jump on stage to shoot Tony, and the gun didn't go off, and I fired it once, twice, three, four, five, nothing.
Gary Scarpa:
They were like, blanks. They didn't go off…
Lee Coffin:
The props team loaded the gun wrong. And so I finally went "PEWWWW" and made a gun sound-
Gary Scarpa:
Loudly.
Lee Coffin:
Loudly, so that Tony would die, otherwise the play didn't continue. I remember the audience exploding in laughter, because I like a cartoon character…I made a gun noise with my mouth. We kept going. The play continued. Then they gave us a standing ovation because we hadn't broke character, and we continued. And Maria says to me, "How many bullets are left, Gino? How many are left?" And someone in the chorus whispered, "Apparently not very many." And so it was another example of composure, because-
Gary Scarpa:
For you.
Lee Coffin:
For me and Maria, it's like, first the gun didn't work. And I'm like, "WTF, what am I going to do? Because this is like the pinnacle moment of this play." And the prop malfunctioned.
Fran Scarpa:
It was so funny. It was so funny. But as the director, I'm like, "Oh, my God."
Gary Scarpa:
Oh yeah, I was like dying.
Fran Scarpa:
And then the ensemble people, all the rest of the cast came on stage like nothing ever happened.
Gary Scarpa:
They drew the audience right back in.
Fran Scarpa:
And went right, boom, right back into [inaudible 00:35:43]-
Gary Scarpa:
They came on just like the gun went off as it should have gone off. And for you though, and I have a chapter in the book, I begin the chapter with the Murphy's Law quote. And so, yours is one of, this gun episode is one of four or five different examples that I give. But for the actor, it's live theater, something is likely to go wrong, and you need to solve it, baby. We have an audience sitting out there, and they didn't come here to see you flounder. They came here to see you succeed. And we want them to be comfortable, no matter what happens. You figure it out. And you did. I mean, you did the only thing you could have done.
Lee Coffin:
Well, and it was that bit of improv I took in one of your drama classes where I thought, "Okay, I have to make this scene work." And that's a lesson from the stage. It taught me composure. It taught me to be quick on my feet. I got off-stage and I fell on the floor.
Gary Scarpa:
I have to believe that that kind of lesson translates to other parts of our lives.
Lee Coffin:
Of course.
Gary Scarpa:
Where we have to problem solve in other situations, you know?
Fran Scarpa:
Yeah. Because it doesn't always go as planned, does it?
Lee Coffin:
No. And you have to be able to adapt, you know?
Gary Scarpa:
And there's, as I'm telling the story of the prop malfunction, there's teamwork. We depend on the prop crew to load the gun prop. I'm not blaming anybody, but it was a boo-boo.
Fran Scarpa:
Throwin' in some shade there.
Lee Coffin:
Somebody did something wrong, something went wrong.
Gary Scarpa:
I don't even know who it was, but it's ... Maybe there were no, I don't even know to this day what the problem ended up. Maybe the person didn't load the blanks in the gun, I don't know.
Lee Coffin:
But that's an example of like the play is not ... The lesson of the stage is not just who's got the lead. I wasn't even the lead. I was a supporting character in that, in a pivotal moment in the story.
Fran Scarpa:
Yeah, very pivotal.
Lee Coffin:
But you know, the next year I was stage manager, because I'd been on my junior year abroad, and I came back too late for auditions. It was "Annie" and I was the stage manager.
Gary Scarpa:
I don't remember that.
Fran Scarpa:
And you participated.
Lee Coffin:
And I wanted to, it was the only time in all the shows I did with you where I was not on stage, I was backstage. And I remember thinking the lesson there was, wow, there's so much going on with the lighting cues and getting the cast on and off and the set changes and the curtain, and it's invisible to the audience, but critical. And so, I share that example, because I think in the college admissions space, a lot of students get caught on the, "I need to be front and center and shaking the pompoms all the time, and I just re-enrolled someone today." And the summary line from the reader was, this is a behind the scenes kind of guy. And every campus needs that.
Gary Scarpa:
Yeah.
Fran Scarpa:
absolutely.
Lee Coffin:
There's a lesson from drama.
Fran Scarpa:
Absolutely.
Lee Coffin:
You're the behind the scenes person, or you're the one who wrote the play. And have to reimagine the script as it's being delivered by an actor and realize, "Well, I wrote that, but it's not landing quite the way I wanted it to."
Gary Scarpa:
A person that arguably has had the most successful stage career was a backstage kid who was also our stage manager. And he's about my daughter Gina's age. I'd say he's about 46 today. And right out of college he went to Boston University, he majored in technical theater. I didn't know what he'd end up being a lighting guy, a lighting designer, set designer. He could have been a stage manager, because he was that for us. But what he does is he makes sure ... This guy works only on Broadway. He opens Broadway shows. His job is to go to the scenic company and make sure they're building the scenery to spec. And then make sure it fits, because things fly up and go down in elevators. And Broadway stages, Broadway wings are a fraction of the size of Shelton High school's wing.
We had a huge wing, it was a great stage that gave us a lot of versatility with scenery, a Broadway stage, all kinds of things happen. Things are brought up on what are called chain lifters, and they're hanging in the air, and then something else goes up and something comes up. He makes sure all that happens.
Lee Coffin:
Some of us gravitate towards the front and some of us don't. And whoever you are, just own that. And that's part of the storytelling. And it gets to, as you're thinking about college, you might be a senior and you've been admitted. And you're, this is airing in the middle of April, so we're in prime time. Pick a place to go buy the sweatshirt. And one of the questions is, if you're a drama club person, does this continue to be part of your story?
Fran Scarpa:
If I could go back to Mia. So Mia, what she thought was that she was going to go to a conservatory school, or hoping to go to NYU. When she saw Muhlenberg, which was a liberal arts college, the thing that attracted her to Muhlenberg was it reminded her of Amherst. When she went to see Amherst she loved the feel of the campus. She realized then, "Maybe I want a campus experience. I want to be on a campus not in the middle of a big, giant city."
Gary Scarpa:
In small rather than large.
Fran Scarpa:
But it was important that the theater program was a good theater program as well. Gary and Mia went to see a production there, met the head of the department, the theater department, got a feel for what they were doing, bringing in people in from the city, so excellent faculty, many opportunities to perform. And so she said, "I can't believe I'm going to say this, but I think Allentown, Pennsylvania is where I need to be, and not in New York City or Boston." I think you have to, like you're saying, you really look at what are the things that are important to you. And it was a writing-intensive school. She ended up being invited. You have to be invited into the writing program to be a tutor or a mentor, work in the writing center. And she was in her freshman year. So the two things, her English, love for English and her love of theater and dance really fit for her. It was the perfect-
Lee Coffin:
At that place.
Fran Scarpa:
... college for her.
Lee Coffin:
You're the parents of someone who left high school and studied drama in college. Talk to the idea that that's a risky major. I don't think it is, but parents will sometimes say, "Should we let child go to college as a drama major?"
Fran Scarpa:
Okay. I'm going to ask you a question, Mr. Dean.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah.
Fran Scarpa:
What was your major in college?
Lee Coffin:
I majored in history.
Fran Scarpa:
In history. And what were you going to do with that history degree?
Lee Coffin:
I had no idea.
Fran Scarpa:
No idea. Okay, so you went to college as a history major.
Lee Coffin:
Right.
Fran Scarpa:
Why is that different than going to college and being a theater major? You're going to be studying all kinds of literature and you're going to be doing all kinds of things in a drama. I understand why parents, we were saying it too-
Gary Scarpa:
If I could-
Fran Scarpa:
Don't major in theater. Major in something else and minor in theater.
Gary Scarpa:
Tell Lee about your father.
Fran Scarpa:
My father who was born in Sambuca di Sicilia, he was an opera conductor, an impresario, he produced his own operas.
Gary Scarpa:
He wasn't-
Fran Scarpa:
Conducted a-
Gary Scarpa:
It wasn't his hobby, it was his career.
Fran Scarpa:
It was his business. And he said to me, "Don't make music your business."
Gary Scarpa:
And we did.
Fran Scarpa:
We didn't listen to that. But I understand why, because when music or the arts are your business, which we experienced running a theater as well as directing the creative end of it, it's difficult. It's difficult. And sustaining a career as a performer in the theater is very difficult. However, as we have spoken about here together, those skills that you learn in the arts are so important. And I think an education in the arts is valuable, no matter what you're doing. Going on from beyond that. Very often what we major in is not the thing we end up doing. But the skills that we gain from that experience, the road is going to lead us where the road is going to lead us. I do however understand that a career in theater, parents get nervous. We were nervous about it too.
But what did she do? She ended up being an English teacher for a while. And she's an English tutor. She works with her sister Gina. And Gina has a voiceover business. And Mia edits and writes and records. The English piece, and that was, she's earning money from that, as well as from the arts. It's going to, I think, work itself out anyway.
Gary Scarpa:
Yeah. If I could offer a slightly less enlightened perspective on the subject, at that time I was very concerned. I am the son of two very practical parents. And so I'm a very practical person, and the stage is a very difficult ... I'm not speaking of Hollywood and film and television because I don't have a lot of knowledge of those things. But I have a lot of knowledge. I've seen a lot of kids major in theater, move to New York, wash out of it in five to 10 years. Very difficult world. Very difficult world. When Mia, when our daughter chose to major in theater, the practical part of me really kicked in. But I also wasn't about, I just listened to one of your podcasts. I wanted to prepare and I listened to three or four podcasts, which were great, I love it. And as a former guidance counselor I love it.
Fran Scarpa:
Now we're fans.
Gary Scarpa:
Yeah, we're fans. I'll be listening in the gym at Planet Fitness. But you talked about how mom and dad don't say, "Well, we're applying to Dartmouth and we're applying to Middlebury." Get the "we" out of it. Let's get the pronoun right, she or he or they are. You talked about that, which I thought was really interesting. I wasn't going to impose my will on her, so I thought, "You're very talented. It's a really rough world. If this is what you want to do, go for it." But I would have felt much more comfortable at the time if she majored in accounting.
Lee Coffin:
That's not as romantic.
Gary Scarpa:
No, it's not nearly as anywhere near it.
Lee Coffin:
Let's summarize this episode with, what are the lessons of the stage? If we had five or six qualities, we want to invite students to ponder as they journey through college admission. We've talked about confidence and composure, adaptability-
Fran Scarpa:
commitment.
Lee Coffin:
Commitment.
Fran Scarpa:
Sacrifice. Because you can't do it all the way, unless you're giving up your time. You're giving, maybe you can't participate in another activity, because it conflicts with what your commitment is to being in the arts or whatever it is you're doing. I think that problem-solving, creative problem-solving as-
Lee Coffin:
The gun doesn't go off. Yeah.
Fran Scarpa:
And also, you learn to work with people of all kinds and personalities of all kinds. And you have a common goal that you have to achieve. And that experience of being the fourth guy from the left and you're thinking, "Oh God, here I am. Fourth guy from the left, and nobody's going to notice me." I used to say, "Right now, Lee, I can't see you, because I'm sitting in seat G2. If I go over here to G3, I got you baby, and I see you. And if you're not doing your thing, then this whole thing isn't working." Whatever piece you are of that, whatever piece you are of the puzzle, of whatever it is you're doing in life, you need to bring your best self to that. Mr. Scarpa, any thoughts?
Gary Scarpa:
You hit on a lot of great ones. I'll throw another one in that I don't think was mentioned. You're on stage with someone, boy, you really have to trust each other. I mean, you're delivering lines and there's you and one or more other people, and you have to trust that they have done their work, that they've prepared themselves, that they're going to say the words that they're supposed to say that cue you for your line, because if they don't, you're going to have to fix it. And I've seen so many people fix it too, which is just, there are awesome stories of people save. We call them saves, like so many wonderful stories of saves. It's unfortunate that the save needed ... Sometimes those were the result of nervousness on the other person, or sometimes not quite the best preparation on their part. But that trust is important. And when two people are working and clicking on all cylinders, it's great to see.
Lee Coffin:
I think I'm so looking forward to reading this book. A, because it's my story. As I was preparing for this conversation it brought me back all those years, and I thought, "What lessons do I carry from my high school extracurriculars?" And as an applicant, I'm sure they used the word well-rounded. I did a lot of different things when I was at Shelton High School. But the two that were most important to me were drama club and newspaper. And my senior year I was president of the drama club and I was editor of the newspaper. And those two classrooms were across the hall from each other.
Fran Scarpa:
Handy.
Gary Scarpa:
Yeah, 230 and 231. My two favorite teachers from my two most important extracurriculars. And to students, think about that. Like why are you doing what you do when you're not in class?
Fran Scarpa:
Right.
Gary Scarpa:
How does it animate the story of you? Bring that forward when you apply, when you interview. My one little tip is, when I used to do interviews, the drama kids were always the best interviewees because they would walk in and be like, "Hello, we're here." And it was fun. But the lesson of this, whatever you're doing, we spent this episode focused on drama. Wherever your jam brings you, what are you learning from it? And if you're not learning anything, why are you doing it? The idea that it "looks good for college," is a fallacy. It should look good because you love doing it.
Fran Scarpa:
Yeah.
Gary Scarpa:
Yes.
Lee Coffin:
Thank you both. I wonder if I would be a dean if I hadn't been in the drama club in high school. I mean, I could do the work, of course, but I think the persona that I have to inhabit as the Dean of Admissions at Dartmouth College is a type of performance. And you taught me how to do that. All these years later, thank you both for being the mentors you were for me and the hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of other people in Shelton, Connecticut, that little town outside New Haven where we grew up.
Fran Scarpa:
Well, thank you, Lee.
Gary Scarpa:
Thank you.
Fran Scarpa:
And you are part of the fabric of our lives too.
Lee Coffin:
Thank you.
Fran Scarpa:
Grateful to be here.
Lee Coffin:
Happy that you made the drive.
Fran Scarpa:
Happy to be here with you. And thank you.
Lee Coffin:
Fran Scarpa:
Thank you.
Lee Coffin:
I'm Lee Coffin from Dartmouth College. Thanks for listening.