This is a continuation of "No, I Had Pizza" — part of an ongoing series about finding my way as an artist.
I remember the day I gathered all my courage and walked into the secretary's office of an integrative school nearby. My idea was to ask whether they offered theatre. I came without any preparation; I just wanted to see what would happen. So I walked into the office, and nothing. The room was empty, and I was just about to leave again, thinking this was definitely not the right moment, when the door to another room opened and the secretary came in.
She was more than open to my proposition. She told me that for years she'd been telling the school director that they needed theatre. On top of that, she informed me they were having a meeting right now — the school director, the representative teacher, and her — and suggested I follow her back in and tell them about my idea.
Really? Is this happening right now?
All of a sudden, I was sitting in that meeting, talking about my idea of giving workshops and making things up as I went along. We could do it bilingually, bla, bla, bla… It was a true moment of real-life improvisation.
A bit later, I walked out of there with basically an agreement that I would give theatre workshops to 6- to 12-year-olds.
We had a lot of fun together. We began and ended each session sitting in a circle, and I remember how sweet it was seeing the kids all wanting to sit next to me. In between, we would invent scenes, and so on.
Later on, the representative teacher, a very nice man, asked me to teach drama together with him in his class of 14-year-olds.
He was responsible for discipline, and I could do the creative part. We worked great together, and the experience felt like a special gift. We developed two plays from scratch over two successive years. One was based on the film Mr. & Mrs. Smith, which the pupils had chosen. The other was based on the pupils' dreams and hopes, and we called it "Never Give Up." Not in my wildest dreams did I expect such an outcome when I walked into that secretary's office. It turned out to be a very fulfilling time, working and playing with kids. I befriended some of the parents, one couple in particular, whose daughter loved coming to the afternoon workshops. The mother was a singer, and I ended up taking lessons with her. It all felt very much in the flow, and I was in my element.
Until one day, a teacher who had been on maternity leave came back, claiming that theatre had been her remit.
She didn't have any training in it whatsoever, but she insisted on taking it back. All of a sudden she was taking over the class with the teacher, and my afternoon workshops were becoming fewer. I raised it with the teacher, but I was told there was nothing they could do — she had done it before.
I really felt like she was edging me out, and so I eventually left, feeling a bit bitter toward her.
I had been working there for a bit over two years. Maybe my leaving was one of the first signs, amongst others, that Hamburg wasn't quite working for me anymore, and that it was about time to concoct something new, to dream somewhere new.