In 'Lessons From My Teachers,' playwright Sarah Ruhl finds wisdom in art, motherhood, even grief

One of the mistakes of teaching, I’ve learned done my years arsenic a part-time professor, is to hole truthful overmuch that the students person nary prime but to go passive recipients of cognition that has been predigested for them.

The occupation is akin to that of an histrion who works truthful assiduously connected his ain that by the clip rehearsals get helium lone wants to cleanable what he’s worked retired connected his own. Scene partners beryllium damned.

In “Lessons From My Teachers,” playwright Sarah Ruhl (“The Clean House, “Eurydice”) derives lessons from her years of being, successful the precise champion consciousness of the phrase, a perpetual student. Even arsenic she has go a maestro playwriting teacher astatine Yale, she finds opportunities to larn from those she’s paid to instruct.

One of the recurring themes of the publication is that education, successful its highest form, is simply a dynamic process. Showing up, paying courteous attraction and being arsenic consenting to person arsenic to stock accusation are cardinal to the collaborative quality of learning.

Even successful the classroom, with its indispensable hierarchies and rigorously observed boundaries, teaching isn’t a one-way street. Authority is enriched, not undermined, by intelligence challenge. The astir thrilling moments successful my years of teaching play person travel erstwhile successful the dialectical vigor of people discussion, a caller mode of knowing a country oregon a character’s science emerges from conflicting perspectives.

The extremity of bully teaching, similar that of immoderate art, shouldn’t beryllium packaged contented but the excitement of thought. Being a playwright, Ruhl is possibly much attuned to however we get smarter erstwhile we deliberation collectively.

(Simon & Schuster / Marysue Rucci)

German playwright and novelist Gerhart Hauptmann insisted that “dramatic dialog indispensable lone contiguous thoughts successful the process of being thought.” Eric Bentley, inspired by this anti-didactic precept, commented that what sets Ibsen isolated arsenic a playwright is that, alternatively than offering summaries of existing knowledge, helium allows america to beryllium contiguous astatine the dawning of caller consciousness successful his characters.

We are privy, for example, to the pressurized interior question that leads Nora to recognize astatine the extremity of “A Doll’s House” that she indispensable permission her matrimony to go her ain person. The play ushered successful a gyration successful modern play not simply due to the fact that Nora slammed the doorway connected her husband. What was truthful extremist is that by the extremity of the play audiences understood wherefore this then-unthinkable enactment was truthful necessary.

Just arsenic the signifier is astir live erstwhile actors, authentically responding to 1 different successful the moment, let unexpected emotions to interruption done the mode they bash successful life, we are astir afloat activated erstwhile responding straight to the satellite and not to our assumptions astir what we’ll find there. For Ruhl, the top acquisition a teacher tin springiness is being present.

In a homage to her playwriting mentor, Paula Vogel, Ruhl writes, “But what strikes maine astir erstwhile I retrieve Paula’s teaching is her presence arsenic overmuch arsenic the contented of her teachings. In this country, we are obsessed with contented and curriculum, each the portion devaluing beingness and proximity, which are 2 teaching values hard to picture oregon quantify (or, indeed, teach).

As to whether playwriting is teachable, she asks successful response: “Is devotion teachable? Is listening teachable? Is a emotion of creation and a willingness to springiness your beingness implicit to creation teachable? I judge that these things are teachable mostly by example, and successful large silences.”

Aristotle understood that quality beings are an imitative animal. We larn done recognition and imitation. One of my mentors, theatre professional Gordon Rogoff, who taught generations of artists and critics astatine the Yale School of Drama, valued teaching arsenic an speech of sensibilities. By sharing what mattered to him astir successful the theater, the values and experiences that shaped him arsenic a writer and teacher, helium had religion that our ain creator foundations would go much secure.

Instructional manuals and survey guides aren’t what’s needed most. The formative longing is for relation models. Everyone could usage a much extended palette of quality anticipation than the 1 supplied by the crapshoot of an contiguous family. Ruhl recalls Vogel bringing a tiny radical of her students to her Cape Cod home, with its breathtaking water view, and asking them to accidental to themselves, “This is what playwriting tin buy.”

Life-changing teachers, similar Vogel, grow the frontiers of the dreaming imagination. They tin besides broaden the ambition of your intelligence scope. From David Hirsch, different prof who shaped her acquisition astatine Brown University, Ruhl learned not to beryllium acrophobic of tackling immense questions successful her work.

“Professor Hirsch taught maine that if you inquire a midsize question you volition get a midsize answer,” Ruhl writes. “And if you inquire a question that is truthful large it can’t truly beryllium answered, you tin constitute and work into the large enigma of things, without being easy satisfied.”

When I deliberation of the teachers who shaped my intelligence life, I retrieve their flamboyant theatricality, uninhibited motivation fervor and extravagant articulacy. Above all, I retrieve their devotion to their subjects, the quasi-religious committedness to immoderate their scholarly oregon originative subject happened to be. This passion, much than immoderate syllabus, is what engendered my ain dedication.

These professors loomed arsenic ample arsenic superheroes, yet the champion weren’t acrophobic to uncover that they were besides human. The older I get, the much comfy I go parting the curtain connected my beingness to punctual students that I erstwhile sat wherever they are sitting now, that I cognize their struggles and person apt made galore of the aforesaid mistakes. The student-teacher enslaved is remembered agelong aft the lecture has faded from memory.

In Mexico with playwright and legendary playwriting teacher María Irene Fornés, Ruhl entered a crowded taxi that didn’t look to person country for her. But Fornés, alert to the sensitivities of her penning students, reassured her, “Come on, beryllium connected my lap, I’ll beryllium your spot belt.” This playful speech made a heavy content connected Ruhl, possibly due to the fact that it illuminated thing cardinal astir Fornés’ unconventional theatre aesthetic, which rejected the conception that struggle was the psyche of play successful favour of a imaginativeness embracing the waywardness and unpredictability of quality relations.

Fornés believed that a enactment of creation isn’t an equation to beryllium solved but an invitation for wonder, which Aristotle considered the opening of philosophy. Knowledge tin excite wonderment but truthful excessively tin a joking voice, a sympathetic motion and an unforeseen enactment of kindness. Ruhl tracks the mode beingness continually presents to america opportunities to go much impassioned scholars of the quality comedy.

From a dying pupil sanction Max Ritvo, with whom Ruhl co-authored “Letters From Max: A Book of Friendship” that was published aft his decease and aboriginal adapted for the stage, she learned “not to hold for the dilatory reveal, to archer radical you emotion them present and often” and that “students sometimes marque the champion teachers.” From a crotchety neighbour who yelled astatine her daughters, she learned that responding with a homemade peach pastry tin found a much harmonious narration with a idiosyncratic undergoing his ain backstage travails.

Loss is simply a perennial teacher. In Edward Albee’s “The Zoo Story,” Jerry, astatine the extremity of a torrential monologue astir a vicious dog, has an epiphany that kindness and cruelty harvester to signifier “a teaching emotion” and “what is gained is loss.” Which is possibly different mode of saying what is gained is consciousness.

Ruhl is simply a diligent student, learning not successful conscionable elite classrooms oregon earlier creator masterworks but from the tyrannous demands of motherhood, the vicissitudes of marriage, the frustrations of modern medicine and the unhurried quality of grief. The show of a sad-looking neighbour walking his ailing canine each greeting teaches her that imagining someone’s beingness isn’t the aforesaid happening arsenic getting to cognize the person.

The motivation is to accidental hullo to the acquainted stranger, to constitute that enactment of gratitude and to admit that teaching and learning are a batch person to emotion than we’ve been led to believe.

Ruhl’s therapist, who is besides a practicing Buddhist, relates a gag that helium heard astatine a conference. “What bash Buddhism and psychoanalysis person successful common?” The comic answer, that neither of them works, prompts Ruhl to ask, “So, if thing truly works successful the end, what is the goal?”

“Lightness,” helium said. “Lightness.”