MAMA HOOD: EDUCATOR, ARTIST

By Patrick Alparone ’00

Arlene Hood’s impact on my life is immeasurable.

In the final quarter of the 1996/1997 school year, I walked into Art Room B to what I had been told was an easier FAPA class. I had also been told the teacher of that Theatre class was “funny,” and “quite a character.”

To an invisible 15 year old boy—who was attempting to mix apathy and cynicism into an identity—this news was distressing. Anything unknown or unpredictable that threatened my limited, yet rigid, understanding of the world was not welcomed.

But the rumors were true: this lady was funny. Somehow cutting through any adolescent dismissiveness or rebelliousness, Arlene used her sense of humor and charisma to reach through to us.

Over the years Arlene made me repeat to her students the story of my first audition. After that same resistance I brought her when we met, she’d sit back in her chair and smile as I ran through the story one more time. How my name was called and in standing up, I got my chain wallet got stuck in those old wooden seats. How I stood there scared of auditioning but mortified that I was now bound to the furniture.

How I sat curled over my script filled with confusing words that I’d never seen, yet somehow expected to make sense of them and recite them loud enough for the auditioning audience to hear.

How apparently the Theatre Kids resented her decision to give this 16 year old, this vaporous haze with shaggy hair a job to do.

She’d turn to your freshman and say “I saw something in him. And I was right.” Saying goodbye to Arlene means we also have to let go of the numerous inside-jokes and comedic bits. Anyone that worked with her for even a short amount of time, be it the theatre or classroom, has a long running gag, a secret handshake, personal to you and her.

Throughout the many productions we collaborated on over the past 25 years, we compiled an archive of bits – born in the delirious late hours of rehearsal when you’re so tired you could cry—and kept them alive for decades, even up to those last hours.

We laughed.

We laughed from across the room with each other. We sat laughing silently with each other. We were sometimes in a room with 1000 other people and the only ones laughing. We laughed on the phone for hours. We spent a number of months there where we laughed on the computer together.

And, as our students will attest, I laugh with her while ardently trying to explain a bit.

It will take some time before I can adequately sum up Arlene’s influence as an educator and as an artist; but as a friend and mentor, even longer.