The Master Class

The Master Class a One Act play by

CHRISTINE WAXSTEIN

2214 S Greenwood Drive Apt #9 Johnson City, TN 37604 865.724.9956 waxsteinc@gmail.com

Š 2012

CHARACTERS DARBY WHITFIELD:

female in her early 20s. Has been a dancer all her life and struggles to find an identity outside of dance.

EDEN P. STANBURY:

female in her early 20s. Was brought up in a ballet studio and strives for perfection; believes all things can be fixed if one works hard enough.

VERONICA OWENS:

(called “Ronnie” by her classmates)female in her early 20s. Is an advanced level dancer and learned long ago not to let a critique get you down.

PAULA MCKINNEY:

female in her early 20s. Is at the beginning level in dance and beats herself up for not being better. Wishes she’d had more training early on.

JESS TILLERSON:

female in her early 20s. Has just started dancing and struggles to feel confident when she sees the other girls’ in class looking better. She has a curvy figure and feels negatively about her appearance.

MICHON STEVENS:

female in her early 40s. Is the guest instructor auditioning dancers for her Master Class. Once a renowned professional dancer, she has found a love for teaching and now strives to help students find their paths. She is intimidating at first, but the hard shell begins to fade as she learns more about the students.

SETTING A dance studio.

TIME The present.

2

The Master Class SCENE 1 (Late morning, mirrored dance studio in a campus building.

Shadows of DARBY, EDEN, VERONICA, PAULA, and JESS are seen holding dance poses that represent their character...)

MICHON (Loudly) Thank you!

(Lights Up) (All five dancers unfreeze and hurriedly go to various parts of the stage – EDEN is by herself and drink from water bottles near their belongings. MICHON is sitting DSR at a table taking notes on papers strewn about...)

DARBY (to VERONICA) Can you believe she’s really here?

VERONICA (to DARBY) Why not? It said on her website that she is looking for a teaching position now.

DARBY (to VERONICA) I know I just can’t believe she ended up here of all places!

You’d think a three time Tony winner would end up teaching at Julliard or something. (sighs) She is even more beautiful in person.

VERONICA (to DARBY) You haven’t even seen her dance yet.

(JESS and PAULA overhearing...)

PAULA Hey, Ronnie what are y’all talking about?

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VERONICA The dance teacher over there-Michon Stevens-she’s famous or something.

(EDEN overhearing...)

EDEN She’s not famous or something, she is a living legend. The original Maria in WSS PAULA (sarcastic) Great, just my luck.

JESS What’s WSS? EDEN West Side Story, duh! You’ll never make the cut if you don’t know that.

VERONICA Oh, alright Eden, enough. (to JESS) Don’t listen to her, you’ll do fine.

JESS She’s probably right anyway. I looked huge next to all you skinny-minnies.

VERONICA Come on now, you look great!

(EDEN laughs and the girls look at her with an expression of disbelief. Before they can say anything, MICHON addresses them from her table DSR...)

MICHON As you may or may not know, my name is Michon Stevens and I will be the instructor of the master class for which you are currently auditioning.

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(EDEN starts to clap and the others follow) MICHON (Cont’d) Thank you, but that is completely unnecessary.

(The clapping stops) MICHON (Cont’d) Now that I have seen your dance abilities, I would like to move on to the interview portion. Let me begin by saying that this will not be like other auditions you have been to. I am interested in knowing who you are in and outside of dance.

(DARBY’s smile fades and she begins to look lost...)

MICHON (Cont’d) If you for some reason do not want to share with me, or feel like you cannot be open, you may leave now. (pause as everyone looks to each other and the door...)

MICHON (Cont’d) Alright. Let’s get started then.

(MICHON picks up a sheet...)

MICHON (Cont’d) Darby Whitfield!

(Lights Out) (End Scene.)

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SCENE 2 (Shadows of DARBY, EDEN, VERONICA, PAULA, and JESS are seen dancing while moving five chairs into a line which runs the width of the stage. All sit and are in the above order from DSR – DSL. A spotlight appears as each line is given, and then fades back to shadow. MICHON is seated at her table DSR and remains in shadow throughout...)

DARBY I’ve been dancing since I was three, so almost 19 years? I think, 18 or 19.

EDEN I am an advanced dancer. I would like to dance perhaps with a company one day maybe, but yeah I consider myself advanced, semi-professional.

VERONICA I was trained as a classical ballet dancer up until I was 18 and then when I came to college I began dancing contemporary, jazz, aerial, tap pretty much everything under the sun and um, so now yeah I consider myself a contemporary dancer as opposed to a ballerina thank god!

PAULA I started taking classes like last spring semester, so a year. I took ballet, jazz, tap, dance improv, um aerial dance, aerial dance again, musical theatre dance, and uh dance repertory for performance. Oh, and I’m taking intermediate ballet this semester I forgot. Um, what do you mean by intro?

JESS I took ballet, jazz, tap, and acrobatics in third grade and that’s about all the training I’ve had.

VERONICA Dance? It’s my therapy...

JESS ...it’s cathartic...

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PAULA ... it’s the only place where I can really let go and lose control.

VERONICA Dancing makes me feel one with myself. I can get out of my head and into my body, it makes me feel everything at once. I’ve never been to a therapist, I don’t really believe in therapy, my therapy’s always just been going to the dance studio and then whatever came out came out, because it’s such a physical experience. It allows your physical being to be exhausted so that your emotional mental being can kind of heal. I think every person should get to experience that dancer or not dancer. The studio is kind of like my therapist.

EDEN Bill T. Jones in the nineties started dance therapy with terminally ill patients and they actually did a piece—not dancers just every day, run-of-the-mill Americans.

DARBY Dancing for me...it’s just a part of me it’s something that I’ve just always done. I’ve never not been a dancer.

PAULA I had a really terrible semester last semester and I would call my mom and like be crying and stuff and she would be like, you need to go to your dance class like just go dance it out, just PAULA get out of your head and into your body

VERONICA get out of my head and into my body

PAULA (Cont’d) and just dance it all out and sometimes I would be like, No, I don’t want to go, I just want to lay in bed and then afterwards I would be like, god, I’m so glad I went to class...I was glad that I had an outlet.

VERONICA I’m all about feeling and emotion and telling a story and bringing my audience to the stage and allowing them to feel what I’m feeling and be there and take them on a journey. People pull from everyday life experiences and I think that makes it much easier for an audience to latch on to and for me it’s all about the audience, so if the audience is happy then I’m happy and I feel good.

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EDEN if you tell me to do like an arabesque, I know exactly what you want because I’ve been trained, but if you were to say that to somebody who maybe just started dancing in college there would definitely have to be a breakdown taking non dancers and translating techniques to them in simple terms.

PAULA I don’t have a lot of background in dance and I’m really hard on myself anyways and so when I feel like I’m doing something right then I like can give myself a break. I just wish I had training or enough confidence to be able to carry out the move—like I know if I had enough confidence about my dancing I would do a lot better even if I like messed up if I just didn’t care so much I would feel a lot better. I just want to be like good at something and I don’t feel good.

VERONICA Dance improv totally changed my life. It really didn’t matter what you did and sometimes you would have moments that would absolutely rock and then you would have moments that would absolutely suck, but it was just about being comfortable and confident in your movement and I try to translate that into my other dance classes and into like real life. I can dance however the hell I want and not worry about like if it looks good to anyone else cause as long as I feel comfortable in my movements and if I carry out the movements strongly then I feel really really good about it. [Pause] I just kept thinking about my favorite dance instructor. In class she would say, if you can hit four or five counts of the movements and hit them like strongly, it doesn’t matter if you can do the rest of the dance as long as you can hit something and feel good about it and like turn off the internal editor in your head...

(The voices of the other girls in shadow are heard saying things like “you’re not good enough”, “you did that wrong”, “everybody’s laughing at you”, etc. VERONICA physically acts out her head spinning with the thoughts and then finds a way to turn them off...)

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VERONICA (Cont’d) ...just be confident and know that you’re going to mess up sometimes and it—it’s not just like the movement of dance, it’s like the idea the mindset of dance that I love so much.

EDEN I think that dance has made me much more confident because I understand my body. I understand how my body moves and once you’ve reached a certain point in your dance career and you know that you have good dance training then that creates confidence in anybody. It’s like being good in anything, people that are good in athletics are confident because of that.

DARBY As a dancer I’m very confident. I mean sometimes when I go to dance auditions I lose my confidence for a few minutes. It’s usually because I’m used to being one of the top ones and when you’re in a dance audition, they’re all the top ones so that, that kind of takes a hit to the ego.

VERONICA Dance makes you very impervious to ridicule. I’m able to take criticism so well because I’ve been criticized since I was a child. Ballet starts you out at a young age being criticized and most of the time it’s not positive, it’s, you’re completely not doing this right and make sure you, No, you’re still not doing it right, you know? so it’s definitely a repetition of that.

DARBY I’m not a naturally gifted um, ballet dancer uh, I do believe I have a natural talent, but ballet just is something that I have to work very hard at. Not getting cast I just took it as obviously there’s something I need to work on more because if you don’t make the cut there’s obviously something wrong, right?

EDEN I was a company member and a part of the company required us to weigh-in. Most ballet companies—most dance companies in general are like that, but as far as ballet companies go, you’re gonna have a weigh-in every week. Anybody that’s taken dance at a reputable studio knows that. I feel like every little girl has a bad dance teacher experience and my dance teacher taught me amazing technique and determination, so I mean for that I am grateful.

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DARBY My dance teacher growing up was not my biggest fan, so she picked on me quite a bit—even if I wasn’t the only one doing something wrong. When I was really young she would make me come in front of the whole class because my mother didn’t know how to do a ballet bun correctly. I’ve been singled out for NOT being right several times in my life.

PAULA I’m terrible at ballet like I’m just not a ballet dancer, but I took beginning ballet and I’m taking intermediate ballet now.

One time in beginning ballet I was feeling really good about what I was doing I was like, oh, yeah I got this! and the teacher was like, does everybody see what Paula is doing? and so everybody was looking at me and I was like, hmm, hmm, hmm – I’m doing it! and she was like, that is the exact opposite of what you want to be doing and I just started crying. I cry almost every single time after ballet. I want to be a good dancer but I’m really impatient, I just don’t give myself enough time.

JESS I’ve never been a stick thin ballet dancer. You know most ballet dancers are barley an A and I’m a D cup, so that played a big role in it. I’ve always had to deal with not being the right body type all the time for certain dances and I mean it’s nerveracking especially when you’re dancing with somebody who’s literally the size of your arm and they’re your competition.

It’s like, well how do I compete with that? I think any given dancer who’s not under ninety pounds goes through that.

PAULA Whenever someone else is pointed out as doing something correctly then I like get upset with myself like, ugh, why can’t I do it like that?

EDEN I’ve always had a level of respect because I’m one of the only technically trained dancers. They were just respectful like always and took my opinion on dance seriously.

DARBY I’m kind of like blind to that because I’m not a jealous person so I don’t realize that other people get like that.

10

PAULA I feel like a failure when I mess up. There are other people in there that have had dance backgrounds and have taken intermediate ballet before and are taking it again and I just don’t like feeling like the weakest link.

JESS I think it’s a way for them to also correct themselves. Like whenever someone else is corrected, then I kind of check myself and see if I’m doing the same thing and reevaluate what I’m doing and fix it. I know like not every single person in the room is doing it correctly so whenever someone else is corrected it’s kind of like a re-check moment.

PAULA I want to be on everybody else’s level and I don’t want to be like always the last one to learn everything in class. Even though like I’m usually always behind cause when you don’t take dance training very young and you don’t have that learning choreography thing down it’s like really hard to learn choreography. Especially for me, I just learn things slowly and I feel like I’m competing, not competing with everybody else, but like trying to not look like the worst one in there.

DARBY As far as like my personal confidence I mean sure I have insecurities, but I don’t go around with my insecurities on my sleeve. Confidence is almost like my little shield for that just like everybody has that persona that they put on.

It takes to class I’m just thinking

JESS me like forever to figure out what I’m gonna wear to go cause if I don’t feel comfortable in what I’m in then gonna be looking at myself the whole time and like bad things about myself.

PAULA If the teacher was to instead of telling me I was doing something wrong, showed me a better way to do it or how I could improve, then I would spend less time like looking in the mirror and seeing everybody else. Even when I’m doing it correctly I still see myself doing it wrong. I feel like if the mirrors weren’t there then I wouldn’t even worry about it in the first place. I would just be focused on dancing.

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JESS Whenever there’s a mirror there, I am always looking in it. I’m looking at my legs and my stomach and my hair and my face, like if my eyes look really tired or like if I’ve gotten any skinner or if I feel like I’ve gained weight or something.

DARBY If I’m not doing the movement, I’m definitely staring at like my hips, or my thighs, or turning to the side to see if I look skinny or fat that day I mean, that’s just normal. But when I’m actually doing the movement I’m looking at body placement, what my arms are doing, what my head is doing, and all that.

JESS I try to be as far away from the mirror as I can cause otherwise I’m just gonna be criticizing myself the whole time.

EDEN I’m focused on the movement: how the movement looks on me, whether I’m doing the movement right as opposed to, “my love handle looks fat there” which I think makes the difference between a good dancer and a great dancer, if you could put that aside. The mirrors are extremely important in dance because you don’t know how something will look on yourself or on other people until you’re able to see it kind of reflected back to you. For me, if I’m actually doing movement my focus is still on myself but it’s a completely different type of focus. I mean like I—I’m looking at my technique. I’m looking whether or not I’m turned out, turned in, little details about what my body’s supposed to look like for the dance, even down to like what my fingers are supposed to be doing, where my head’s supposed to be looking. I’m really paying attention to what the choreography is and if I’m doing it precisely right because most dancers are kind of perfectionists which choreographers appreciate. The questions that get asked during choreography are very nitpicky usually from experienced dancers and so that’s what I’m paying attention to and that’s what I’m looking for all the way down to like finger placement.

JESS There’s always that image of like...like I know I’m not skinny, like I’ll never be skinny, thin, little Jessica cause that’s just not my body type, but you see like people in movies and magazines and even in like healthy magazines like a yoga magazine there’s like a girl doing a pose or something and she just has like so many muscles. I don’t want to be like skinnyskinny, I want to be like fit and muscular. I’m just like always 12

comparing myself to somebody else that looks good compared to everyone like that looks good because of somebody else’s standards. I’m too busy looking at everybody else and like being like, Oh, I don’t look like them or I’m not skinny or Oh, my hair isn’t the right cut for my face shape or something like that.

DARBY It’s mainly with body image. I think most females feel that way when you look at a model who’s like five nine but weighs less than a hundred pounds I mean that’s nerve-racking for anyone.

PAULA I was watching a choreography video on one of Beyoncé’s music videos and I would like look at her and be like, I wish I had that much confidence whenever I moved.

JESS I definitely feel negatively about myself like I never feel like I can appreciate my body for what it is because I’ve been told, not been told, but been persuaded my entire life to believe differently like, I could be better, I could look better, um I could be tighter, I could be stronger, I could be taller, I’m not balanced correctly, or something like that and so I just—I always feel like I’m not good enough like I’m just like an average or below average.

(Lights Out) (End Scene.)

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SCENE 3 (Shadows of DARBY, EDEN, VERONICA, PAULA, and JESS are seen dancing while moving the five chairs off stage. They EXIT. MICHON gets up from her table, papers in hand, and dances as she pins five sheets to the back wall USR – USL. She EXITS. DARBY, EDEN, VERONICA, PAULA, and JESS ENTER rushing to their pinned sheet. A spotlight appears on each girl as her note is read and then fades back to shadow. MICHON’s voice is heard from offstage...)

DARBY I appreciated your attempt to be open and share with me your dance experiences. Your advanced training has undoubtedly prepared you for quickly learning choreography and I have no doubt that you would excel in professional auditions. I do worry however that you may not perceive an alternate identity outside of being a dancer, and that is something I would like to explore with you further. I am accepting you into the master class.

EDEN Unfortunately, you will not be joining the master class. While it is clear that you perhaps are the most qualified to be enrolled in additional coursework, working hard can only get you so far. Martha Graham has said that "great dancers are not great because of their technique, they are great because of their passion". There needs to be an underlying passion for the art and I am not sure that you have that. Is being a dancer really what you dream of for your life?

VERONICA You are truly inspiring. You have the right attitude to go far in this industry without bringing others down along the way.

Your interaction with the other dancers showed me that you already know the secret to success. What more do I have to teach you? Instead of admitting you into the class, I would like to have you assist me in teaching. I think you may find that is really where you belong.

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PAULA Thank you for sharing such personal and, at times, heartbreaking experiences. I understand that you perhaps doubt yourself when the more advanced dancers are performing, but I believe that you have the potential to really be one of the great talents. In this master class I would like to explore not using the mirrors when learning the choreography. Their absence might possibly give you a different outlook on your abilities. You have made the cut.

JESS It pains me to see how you have been treated in your previous classes. Dance is supposed to instill confidence in one’s body and it seems all you have felt is discomfort with yours. I, unlike others in the industry, believe all body types should be represented on stage. I would like to have you in the master class.

(Shadows of DARBY, EDEN, VERONICA, PAULA, and JESS are seen dancing while the following lines are given...)

MICHON (O.S.) To dance is to be out of yourself. Larger, more beautiful, more powerful. This is power, it is glory on earth and it is yours for the taking.

-Agnes De Mille (Lights Out) (End Play.)

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