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Drama
M
arion Glorioso is going to be an actress. After college, she’ll do some drama work to qualify for an actor’s union, then she’s going onto the big stage. This was her vision 16 years ago when she graduated from college. In those 16 years, she’s done one thing: teach. And how pivotal these 16 years of her life have been. After graduating from the University of Oklahoma with a bachelor of fine arts in musical theater, Fine Arts Department Chair Marion Glorioso joined the school as a Lower School drama instructor in 2004. Her plan was to build the “equity” necessary to later become a union actor and perform as a professional actress. “Jacque Gavin, who was the [Fine Arts] department chair, knew me because she was dear friends with my aunt,” Glorioso said. “So Jacque had seen my work and seen me run different children’s theater camps. When the Lower School drama position opened up, she contacted my aunt and asked, ‘Would Marion be interested in doing this?’ Of course, my aunt called me and said, ‘I think you should apply for this job. It’s an amazing school. It’s in Dallas. You can work at the Theater Center. You can work at Theater Three. There are all these great theaters in Dallas.’” Hoping to continue working as an actress while teaching, Glorioso applied and got the job. However, even after she had the qualifications necessary to move on with her career as a union actress, she decided to stay and teach at the school. “I was surrounded by people in the Fine Arts Department who were extremely passionate about what they were doing, and I had students that were eager and willing to do whatever it was that I asked of them,” Glorioso said. “So I asked myself the question, ‘Am I going to be any more fulfilled in my artistic endeavors? Am I going to be any happier if it’s just me out there performing and doing gig work, going from one show to the next? Or am I satisfied here at St. Mark’s?’” As a young woman at an early stage of her professional career, Glorioso needed to make some decisions regarding her future. Being a teacher at the school played a vital role in the decisions leading up to her current place in life. “There was some shift for me where I was asking ‘What is my goal now? What is my dream now?’” Glorioso said. “I think St. Mark’s helped to shape some of that. I fell in love with the St. Mark’s Lower School students, and there was just so much care that they gave to what we were doing on stage that I really started thinking about having kids and if I wanted to be a mom. I think being around some of the St. Mark’s boys helped me to see that there was that part of my life that I really wanted to explore.” Former drama instructor Rod Blaydes invited Glorioso to work on the Upper School drama productions. This transition opened up the scope of her teaching to include Upper School students as she also took on other work outside of teaching. “I made the decision around that time to
go get my master’s [degree] at [Southern Methodist University],” Glorioso said. “I started working on my master’s and BRIGHT LIGHTS Glorioso has taught in both the Lower School drama classroom directing here. In about and the Black Box Theater, ranging from students in Lower, Middle and Upper School. Through this, her role has changed to the Fine Arts Department Chair. 2015, [former drama Being the Fine Arts Department head instructor] Rod Blaydes entails a lot of new work, including overseeing decided he was going to retire, so I started all travel occuring for debate tournaments, film working solely with the Upper School and festivals and other events. teaching some Middle School classes. Then “I look at all scheduling and staffing we hired somebody to take over in the Lower for the department — how many sections of School, so I became the Upper School drama certain subjects we’re going to have, if there teacher and director.” is additional curriculum we want to add,” Glorioso said. “For example, this year as Over the course of her career, Glorioso has we went through the new daily schedule, it directed a variety of plays, each one leaving her changed the way that we offered some of our with unique memories. fine arts classes in Middle School. I oversee the “One of the first shows that I directed was development of the curriculum for any new a show called ‘The Physicist,’” Glorioso said. courses and oversee the implementation of “It was a relatively small cast of people, and I existing curriculum in current courses.” became really close to those guys during that time. There’ve been a lot of funny stories over the years – there’ve been a lot of challenging stories over the years. Every show makes a mark.” After the tornado prevented students from coming to campus last October, Glorioso had to make adjustments to her plans to be able to produce the fall play, “1776.” And then when the COVID-19 pandemic forced students off campus again in March, Glorioso was forced to call off the spring play.
I’ve got three children of my own, so I also look at all of the boys that I teach and know that they are someone’s son and to care for the boys that I teach as their mothers would care for them. Marion Glorioso, Fine Arts Department Chair
“I was devastated when it became obvious that we were not coming back on to campus last spring,” Glorioso said. “There was a group of senior boys, some of whom I’ve worked with since they were in Lower School. Theo Katsulos [’20], Will Mallick [’20], Thomas Loose [’20] and William Gonzales [’20] — these boys that I have known since they were in first grade. We were set to do this show, and when I realized it was not going to happen, having to tell them that the show is canceled — and they had already been rehearsing for several weeks — that was really hard and disappointing. I’m sad that they did not get to have that final theater experience, and I’m sad I didn’t get to have it with them.” After Gavin decided to step down from her role as the Fine Arts Department head, Glorioso took the job. “It’s a lot of work,” Glorioso said. “In a normal year, you spend a lot of evenings attending concerts and performances. The fine arts program is grades one through 12. There are 15 faculty members that produce a lot of theater, produce a lot of concerts. We produce recitals and have Evensong and things with the choir. So it’s a very big department.”
As the only female department head in the Upper School, Glorioso strives to give a strong representation of female leadership to the solely-male student body. “When you’re a female teacher at St. Mark’s, you’re the only woman in the classroom,” Glorioso said. “So there’s a great deal of responsibility that comes with that. I want to represent the kind of woman that I am, which is somebody who is creative, positive and nurturing, and I am also somebody that knows what I want and sets high expectations. Learning to do that in a way that doesn’t demand attention, but earns the respect of one’s attention, I think that is my approach.” Glorioso feels a responsibility to portray her role in a realistic fashion to the students. “I also know that as a woman on campus, I represent what a professional female in a leadership role looks like to our students,” Glorioso said. “One day, you guys will have women around you on a day-to-day basis, colleagues, bosses, wives, children, women, and I want to help you learn how to communicate in those relationships, navigate the female point of view and be sensitive to sexual inequality.” Looking ahead, Glorioso has a variety of ideas for the direction of her Department. One main goal is cross-divisional collaboration between classes in the Fine Arts Department and with other departments. “While I love the autonomy that we have within our programs,” Glorioso said, “I’m looking for opportunities for things to be crossdivisional within the Fine Arts Department as well as outside of the department. Art and science are so interrelated and so integrated. When we look at the art of filmmaking, so much of that is storytelling and artistic and the visual perspective, but it’s also all of the engineering and the science that goes into [computer-generated imagery], that goes into stop motion. I’d love to see St. Mark’s go into the 21st century of combining some of these tools that we have at our fingertips with the Makerspace or with the planetarium.” STORY Will Pechersky, Axel Icazbalceta PHOTO Owen Simon
Words from colleagues Former Lower School art instructor Alice Oltrogge: “She stepped into her job as the drama teacher as though she had been doing it for years. It was apparent that she knew her subject and was very able to make it exciting for her students. One thing that struck me immediately was how eager she was to learn teaching techniques. She applied – with great success – every tip that was given to her by her St. Mark’s colleagues.”
Former drama instructor Jacque Gavin: “Mrs. Glorioso has always been a supportive colleague, an innovative teacher, and a ‘We can do that’ kind of person. That attitude and spirit has been invaluable over the years, never more so than in the strange times we have experienced in the past year. From the tornado through COVID-19, she hasn’t lost her positive attitude or her ability to make lemonade out of lemons.”
Arnold E. Holtberg Master Teaching Chair Scott Hunt: “What has been impressive to see over the years is how Marion has gone from Lower School teacher to Upper School teacher, advisor and now, department chair. Through that, she’s gained tremendous perspective of how our department works and what all of the various programs do at each division.”
The ReMarker • October 29, 2020
Joining the community with future plans of becoming a professional actress, Glorioso chose a different career path when she fell in love with teaching instead.
Culture
Teaching in the arts
Literature
The decision-making that goes into the books students read. Page 20
Language
Looking into teachers capable of teaching more than one language. Page 21
Competition Preparing for an international student competition. Page 22
In brief
LITERARY FESTIVAL The 14th Literary Festival will be held virtually Jan. 14-15 this upcoming year, the first time the studentlead and student-organized event will have ever been held online. Founded by Jake McAuley ‘08 in 2007, the Festival showcases a variety of writers, from authors to poets, who attend Marksmen English classes and a panel discussion with the entire Upper School to discuss their passion for writing and judge a writing competition. Guests for the Festival have not yet been chosen, and the contest deadline for submissions, which include poetry, fiction and nonfiction, is tomorrow. Leaders for the Festival include Victor F. White Master Teaching Chair in English David Brown, Director of the Literary Festival junior Henry Schechter, and Co-Chairs junior Alex Geng and junior Ekansh Tambe. Notable former guests include Former U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins, bestselling author of “This Boy’s Life” and “Old School” Tobias Wolff, and Vietnam War marine veteran and author of “Matterhorn” Karl Marlantes. DEBATE TOURNAMENT Austin Dunbar and Akul Mittal, as well as Noah Cathey and Ahsan Tahirkheli, were named cochampions of the rookie division alongside another MBA team at the Marist Debate Tournament. Seven teams won at least four of their five debates and ended the first round with winning records, and five of those moved onto the elimination round. Overall, 40 students competed. The tournament took place Sept. 25-26. STUDENT BOOK Freshman Arnav Lahoti published a selfwritten fiction book entitled “Vishnu Reborn” August 16. The book is available both digitally and in paperback on Amazon.com. “Vishnu Reborn” takes place in the modern day, with the gods and villains of Hindu stories coming to life and influencing the book’s narrative. The book follows the journey of Gopal, a boy who embarks on a quest to save the world from evil after learning that the god Vishnu is residing in his body.
