Book Review

Hi Greg

Thanks for giving Fahed a copy of your newly published book on Theatre Ashbury.  I read it yesterday, cover to cover, and found it to be of great interest. Your dedication to your craft is very likely unique, and I don't envision many teachers following full bore in your footsteps, putting in phenomenal hours in pursuit of a top-quality product.

That said, you have demonstrated the potential that lies within so many young people, enabling them to grapple with significant issues and, in so doing, to have achieved results impossible in the rest of the packet factory that is modern education.

In describing the breadth and depth of the material that you brought to the table, you expose the vacuous underside of many of your former colleagues, nowhere more clearly described than in the comment that current Ashbury Theatre focuses on musicals - almost certainly inoffensive, politically correct, and meaningless.

You also describe a tenuous employment environment where the headmaster can eliminate awkwardness at the stroke of a pen based on his or her assessment of the likelihood of offending those paying the bills, who presumably are calling the tunes of their subjugated piper. The attempt to constrain your efforts as noted in the list of parameters within which you were told to function is hilarious, more in its incomprehension of the importance of your work than in its ineffectiveness in controlling a program which must, above all else, "cause no offence".

I know well many of the plays that you staged and I know the issues addressed within them that you describe so well.  The net result of staging these was clearly to get your students to think more deeply, in a nuanced manner, about many of the core issues of modern life.  But you also got them to learn from each other, to find and validate a depth of character and substance in each other that the rest of their education finds inconvenient insofar as it has the potential to distract them from the processing factory that is preparing future automatons for the future AI - infested work force.

You describe the accolades and awards that your group garnered over the years and these too are impressive, but the real rewards, as you well know, rest within the memories and values of your former students.  Whether they work in theatre or something else entirely, they won't forget their exposure to excellence, to being the best they could be and to the fabulous and rich rewards that come from pulling it off against all odds.  In doing this you have achieved something quite rare - leadership training - for these kids will become the leaders of tomorrow, dissatisfied with the strictures of future headmasters, rejecting the simple answers of populist politicians interested primarily in their personal power, and fully aware that success in anything requires a deep commitment, focused work, and a good measure of luck.

I read your book more as a lesson in effective parenting than as a memoire, and I congratulate you sincerely for the effort you put in and for the results that you have and will continue to produce.

Best regards

Allan Martel