#ArtsAtLA

A conversation with Director of Theatre Dennis Canty

A conversation with Director of Theatre Dennis Canty

by Joe Sheppard

“Almost everything I’ve learned that I feel has enabled my success in life, I’ve learned inside of the four walls of a theatre,” says Dennis Canty, now in his second year as Lawrence Academy’s director of theatre. “How to speak, how to listen, how to express my emotions. Empathy. Putting yourself in somebody else’s shoes. Seeing the world through somebody else’s eyes.”

Choosing his words thoughtfully, his reverence for the subject evident in his tone, Dennis continues:

“I say to my students all the time, ‘Forget everything you think you know about a theatre classroom. This is not that classroom. This is a classroom where you’re going to learn that risktaking and failure are the two most important things that we can do to be successful. Learning how to make mistakes; learning how to think about what went wrong and trying something different. Taking a different risk; taking a bigger risk, perhaps.’

“If they can really wrap their heads, hearts and minds around that, I think they really feel successful in the space,” he adds. “And it becomes a place of safety. For some of my students, this is a place where they feel they can be themselves, more than any other place on campus. That’s a privilege — and it’s a privilege I don’t take lightly, that this is the place they feel most safe and connected to themselves. So, it’s my responsibility to ensure that the space feels that way, and that everyone else in the space rises up to meet these people. It’s the greatest job in the world!”

Theatre has been part of Dennis’ life since childhood, but Lawrence is the first place he has actually made his living at it. His first career, one that he “absolutely loved,” was in public health. A gender studies major in college, he found his first job running a men’s health program in western Massachusetts. “After a few years of that,” he explains, “I transitioned to working for the state, and over a 10-year career, I filled a variety of different roles.”

When the pandemic came, Dennis joined the millions of people who were forced to work at home, separated from colleagues. “I was a bureaucrat, but the work brought me a lot of joy … I was really trying to make a difference for people, even though they had no idea who I was,” he reflects. “But it stopped being joyful. I felt connected to something bigger than myself, but it wasn’t what I wanted to do. I had gone back to graduate school. And so, long story short, someone pointed me in the direction of this opening at Lawrence Academy … “… and here I am,” Dennis says with a smile. “It’s hard for me to imagine doing anything different now after a year and a half. I am busier than I’ve ever been. And I feel like there's more work than I’ve ever had before. But it’s work that brings me so much joy.”

Dennis is nothing if not busy. His class load includes a section of Artistic Expression, LA’s ninth-grade arts program; two levels of acting classes, where more advanced students partner with beginners to act as peer leaders (an

arrangement Dennis values greatly); improv classes; and the “premier” course, the venerable, year-long Honors Theatre Ensemble. He explains: “The fall term [of Honors Theatre] is really about understanding the role of the actor. The winter is about the role of the director and also the playwright, because we’re preparing to write and direct the spring One-Acts. So, the spring is about production and ‘How do I get my One-Act produced?’”

Continuing a long Lawrence Academy tradition, students in Honors Theatre either write an original ten-minute, one-act play or find a previously written work they’re interested in exploring. “What I love about the 10-minute format,” Dennis notes, “is that it’s often about chewing on a really important or essential question. Some students are exploring: ‘Why do I feel invisible?’ Or, ‘Can you love someone even though you’ve had a really tough relationship with them?’ It’s about two or three characters talking directly to each other without any bells or whistles. I'm so much more interested in storytelling than I am in flash and spectacle. Let’s just talk to each other … understand each other. Let’s get in there and talk about the human condition.”

For Dennis, choosing Mean Girls as this year’s musical was easy: “It’s a great story for a school — answering good questions about our responsibility to put kindness in the world, versus meanness,” he explains, “and about standing up for each other, and to what lengths we will go to fit in and not be our authentic selves. This is the kind of theatre I like to do: theatre that really asks us to think about who we are and what impact we can have on the world.”

Dennis describes Mean Girls, which ran in February, as “massive … a full Broadway musical.” Consistent with his priorities as a director, he “drilled it down to the simplest version of telling a story,” even though there are “a lot of moving parts: projection, lighting, sound.” The show was recently released to high schools — and only high schools — and Lawrence was the first school in Massachusetts to produce it.

“A friend of mine alerted me to the release,” Dennis recalls. “They gave us the rights. We kept it secret for a few weeks and then announced it to the kids. They were ecstatic.”

Almost 50 students were involved in the production, about 40 of them onstage, with music direction by Jenny Cooper. “We can proudly say that more than ten percent of our school was involved in our musical!” Dennis shared excitedly.

And what an impact Dennis is having on LA’s students! “The work here is so powerful and so special and so life-changing,” he says enthusiastically. “What I remember most about high school is what I did in a theatre. I couldn’t tell you what math classes I took, but I remember my theatre classroom” — as will every LA student who treads the boards under Dennis’ caring guidance.