Kicking Ass at Being Vulnerable

                    Kate teaching theater, Bronx Prep, 2003

“What does being brave mean to you?” I ask my high school theater students.
 
It’s fall of 2003, my third week of teaching. We’ve been working on monologues.
 
Things have not been going well. The first two weeks I couldn’t even get a volunteer to stand up and read a single line of text out loud. Improvisation exercises have helped loosen the kids up a little, but now that they’ve got scripts in their hands again, their acting is mechanical and wooden. Kids who swagger through the hallways dripping charisma stiffen up and go dead once they get up in front of each other in class.
 
I’ve been offering steady encouragement, but the kids aren’t fooled. “Miss, don’t sugarcoat it,” a girl named Nina says. “We pretty much suck at this.”
 
So today, I’m taking a different approach. I’m asking about bravery.
 
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