Behind the Curtain: A conversation with Theater Director Jesse Howard

BEHIND the CURTAIN A conversation with Theater Director Jesse Howard

by Carol Visnapuu | Photos by Gregory Cherin Photography

When Jesse Howard was appointed theater director in 2010, only a handful of diehard theater students showed up to his first casting call. He quickly realized that if he wanted to build a robust program, he would need to impassion students and engage audiences.

Fast forward to today, and he’s done both. Over the last ten years, Howard has staged more than 30 productions in Allen Theater—including “Rent,” “Grease,” “In the Heights,” “Metamorphoses,” “Into the Woods,” and “The Crucible”—with each production setting ever higher standards. Raised by musician parents, Howard spent his formative years onstage at the schools he attended. In fifth grade, he played the title role in the musical “Snoopy,” and after his big solo, the audience went wild—and Howard was hooked.

At Berkshire, he hopes to instill that same love of performing in students, introducing them to every aspect of putting on a production, from stage design to sound production to lighting. Howard’s

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caring nature and all-business attitude make him at once a beloved and effective director, and his increasingly ambitious and impressive shows have our community flocking to the theater, time and again.

What was the first play and musical you directed at Berkshire?

When I showed up on Day One at Berkshire, there were only six students [in the fall theater program]. I needed to find a play that had six roles. I found the play “Reckless” by Craig Lucas. I remember the students said, “Nobody’s going to come. They’ve never heard of it, Mr. Howard.” So I told them, “We have to do something that is good enough that the people who come the first night tell everybody else to come the second night.” Quality actually trumps cool. We worked really hard, we had a great turn out, and the kids were like, “Whoa! It’s amazing what happens when you worry less about what people will think and just focus on quality!”

The first musical I directed was “Little

Shop of Horrors,” which is one of my all-time favorites. It has the man-eating plant and these massive puppets that actually eat people on stage. We were able to attract a group of kids that spanned many different social groups, so it was this explosion of fun that landed in February that year. It created a lot of excitement around the theater program and showed the community that anybody can be in a play at Berkshire.

What do you enjoy most about directing students? And what do you find challenging?

I enjoy betting on students and then being proven right. I feel strongly that people are more motivated when they’re setting out to prove somebody right about them rather than trying to prove somebody wrong. I love that feeling when you start to see a student crack through what they thought they could do to what you knew they could do.

What I enjoy most is also the most challenging—to see something students

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“I love that feeling when you start to see a student crack through what they thought they could do to what you knew they could do.”

can’t see. We have to keep acting as if that’s where they are going. Even when they say, “I don’t need to work this hard to memorize my lines.” Yes, you do. Because when you get here and we start throwing a microphone on you and we put lights on you, you’re going to forget 30% of everything you know, and we know that. Students can be over confident sometimes or under confident, so you’re just trying to get them all in the same zone. It’s all about caring for students as individuals while also attending to the essential job of building the group into a team.

What is one of the most important things your students learn being a part of a production?

Students learn the habits of caring … being on time, getting enough sleep, eating well, being respectful to people, listening, saying thank you, doing the things you say you’re going

to do, keeping your agreements, saying you’re going to get off book and actually learning your lines. We have a job to do here, too. I say to the kids, “We draw our swords together.”

for how we try to value all aspects of the student’s audition.

What makes for a good audition?

On a practical level, I am a big fan of pushing students toward a B.A. program rather than a B.F.A. program. They can always get a master’s degree in some area of acting. They can go to a school that has a really good theater program, but that’s more of a community. What our students fall in love with here about theater is the community and the family and how we try to base it around caring about people. I try to focus on the idea that if students love theater, they should prepare to work in a life of theater and not necessarily to be just an actor. Go work with the costume crew, take a set design class … keep your foot in all different areas of theater.

What makes a good audition is when students let us see who they are and do the best they can with the tools they have.

When they don’t try to change who they are to fit what they think we want. Then, they need to trust us to figure out where people fit. And, that can be painful. I’m not joking when I say my least favorite day is when we post the cast list on the call board outside of the green room.

Whether the students got the parts they wanted or not, I offer to meet with them to tell them everything we were thinking behind our decision. All casting is made by a group of adults. I don’t go off and twist my mustache in a closet somewhere and make the decisions. We have a rubric

What advice do you offer students who want to pursue a career in theater?

How do you decide on what production hits the stage each year at Berkshire?

The number one thing we’re always looking to do is give the students and ourselves a challenge that’s going to stretch us in a new way. For example, when our students tackled the difficult art of humor and accents in Monty Python’s musical, “Spamalot” or traveled to Salem, Mass., to read an actual court document from the witch trials with featured characters they would be playing in “The Crucible.” We always strive to tackle questions we don’t already know the answers to, so the students are part of a genuine discovery process.

We want to do productions that touch on important relevant topics that create an invitation for students of all backgrounds. We want community members of all different identities to see themselves on stage. People need to see

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A scene from Berkshire’s theater and music production, “Rent”

an actor who looks like them playing a key role, or a storyline that touches their life featured in a big production.

By selecting material that represents the population of the school, students feel an invitation to care about the play either as a participant or as an audience member.

It is a gift and it must be given to all.

This fall marks the 50th anniversary of coeducation. How did this milestone impact this year’s lineup of shows?

Annie Rosenberg, my assistant director, and I take great care to select musicals with strong female characters, whether it be “Brighton Beach Memoirs,” “Metamorphoses,” or “Hairspray.” We were thrilled when we learned we’d be celebrating the 50th anniversary of coeducation at Berkshire because our fall play, “Nickel and Dimed,” was written by a female playwright based on a book by a female author, with strong female characters. It was a great opportunity to highlight women in theater and to offer amazing roles to our female students.

What is the work you are most proud of during your 10 years at Berkshire?

I am most proud of creating a program where every single person is valued.

I hear students say that theater is a place where they can be themselves because their background is celebrated here. Students aren’t going to come [to the theater program] if they don’t feel invited. We’ve made a real concerted effort to try to have our productions represent all of the backgrounds of our students and faculty at Berkshire from gender to sexuality to race to ethnicity.

For productions, I am most proud of “In the Heights,” as it does such a good job of exposing people who are not from, say, the NYC Latino neighborhood of Washington Heights, to the beauty, struggle, dreams, and life of a community of people whose descendants are from Puerto Rico and Dominican Republic. I think it was eye opening for our community. I really wanted to be a part of that story getting told here. berkshireschool.org/theater

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