By Jillian Suprenant
This past week has potentially been one of the most frustrating I’ve experienced in a long time.
My acting class (which I had hoped would become easier as time went on) actually became harder. No matter how hard I tried in English and Andrew tried in Mandarin, the kids would not focus or listen. Our amazing student helper, Amy, wasn’t able to attend class 2/3 of the week because she had a mandatory English class for students visiting America soon. When I attempted to speak to them in Mandarin, most made fun of me. My clapping pattern to get attention slowly lost its effect and I had to resort to yelling. I repeatedly had to quiet the children down when Hsiao-Mei and Yanan came in to talk to them. Groups blatantly ignored our requests to complete their scripts by a certain due date, and when they did, they often didn’t include what we had asked for, despite Yanan coming in and serving as a translator. Only the couple of kids I had for both English and Acting class seemed to respect me, and only a handful more seemed to respect Andrew.
I became more frustrated when I realized that many of my teammates seemed to have wonderful relationships with all of their extracurricular students. It was a dynamic that I felt Andrew and I were missing. It made me extremely upset. What had we done wrong?
The problem was further compounded when the No. 9 teacher in charge of the upcoming show stopped by our classroom and informed us that she didn’t like the story we were attempting to tell through our script. Instead of including a well-known American story and a well-known Chinese proverb, she wanted us to solely focus on the challenges Duke students faced when coming to China (like eating with chopsticks). It was disheartening for a number of reasons: 1) We only had a few rehearsals left, 2) Andrew and I wanted to include the themes of the American and Chinese stories to provide the story arc with more meaning, 3) focusing solely on cultural challenges would mean that less students would have a chance to participate in the show, and 4) telling a story only about dumb Americans in China felt slightly insensitive to me and my teammates. Yes, we were bad and definitely experienced culture shock when we arrived, but we were not THAT bad.
That night, Andrew and I, along with the Chinese master extraordinaire, Alexander, stayed late at the school, ignoring the teacher’s request and attempting to make the script so good that she couldn’t say she didn’t like it. That night, I returned home around 11 am after finishing the outline of the full script, while my two amazing friends stayed until around 1 am translating everything in Chinese.
Walking away that night from an unfinished product was especially hard. I am a self-proclaimed control freak and having to relinquish that control to two people because I simply had no more to offer was a strange and unsettling feeling. It made me question my purpose, especially in regards to acting class. Why was I there? I was pretty much useless in the classroom and now, I found myself useless outside of it as well.
During our group reflection on Tuesday, we discussed what privilege means and the different types of privilege. I know that I, unlike many Americans, am extremely privileged because of my race, health, and socioeconomic status. But while in the acting classroom, I felt like I got a very brief look into what those not as privileged as myself experience daily: disrespect, disregard, frustration, hopelessness.
Now, of course, I am not saying that my struggles in acting class equal those that underprivileged groups experience in the real world. Mine extremely pale in comparison (obviously). But to even think about having to deal with all the emotions I felt this week (x 10000) every day of your life is overwhelming.
The talk with the teacher also got me and my fellow teammates thinking. We know how important this year is to No.9 because it marks the 10th year of this DukeEngage program. The added pressure, however, has seemed to make the teachers want perfection. While perfection is good to strive for, in this program, it only seems detrimental. If “perfection” means removing kids from the show because they aren’t good enough, what was the point of us teaching them for the past five weeks? Who do we as DukeEngage serve: the students or the school? Is this program only about making the school look good? What about the impact it has on these kids’ lives? How can we have an impact on the kids if at the end of the day the school tells them they aren’t good enough?
Unfortunately, like most things in life, these questions do not have easy or definite answers. And unfortunately, I do not think we will learn the answers until after the program has ended.
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