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It’s a Tuesday after ninth period and I’m walking down the hallway of my South Bronx school toward what looks unmistakably like a fight. A tight circle of high school boys are gathered around two other boys on the floor outside of the classroom where I teach theater. One of the boys appears to be pounding the other with his fist. The other kids are chanting, “Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!”

The scene doesn’t make sense to me. Sure, we have our fair share of hallway scuffles, but compared to most schools in the neighborhood, ours isn’t terribly violent. I get closer and recognize that all the kids in the group are cast members in Les Miserábles, the spring musical I’m directing. Now I’m even more confused. Some of these kids may struggle academically and some have tough home lives, but there’s not a bully or a thug among them. Even so, the energy of the scene automatically triggers memories of my early days as a new teacher breaking up fights in the back of my classroom, memories that are quick to surge up and flood me with adrenaline despite the trusting relationships I’ve built with my students, the leadership work they’ve done over the years and the creative challenges we’ve faced together while developing a musical theater program at Bronx Prep.

The chanting gets louder. I race down the hall.

When I get to the scene, the circle of kids unknots itself and I struggle to make sense of what I’m seeing. George — the student on the floor — is laughing so hard he can barely breathe. The boy kneeling over him is not punching him, but hugging him and slapping him on the back with enough enthusiasm and force to have toppled them both over. Several of the boys around them are wiping tears out of their eyes. At first I assume they’re tears of laughter.

I ask what’s going on. (more…)

A few days ago I got an email that changed everything.

The cast of “Guys and Dolls” take their bows

It’s been a full month — and a seemingly endless succession of graduations, end-of-the-year recitals, awards ceremonies and fundraising benefits — since the kids I teach in the South Bronx put on our school’s annual spring musical, the 1950’s classic, “Guys and Dolls.” This year’s rehearsal process served up an especially overwhelming array of challenges and behind-the-scenes mayhem, all intensified by the parallel unfolding of my second pregnancy. (In case you missed them, here are Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3 of our 100-day countdown to opening night.)

“Well, OK…” you might be wondering, “So, after all of that dramatic build-up … how did the actual show go? (And why has it taken you so darn long to write about it?)”

Well, if you had asked me last week, before the email arrived, I might have heaved an exhausted sigh and launched into what, in the end, would’ve amounted to a sob story.

For starters, I would’ve told you that due to insane scheduling conflicts, our opening night performance was the first time we’d ever had the whole cast together, so it ran more like a dress rehearsal than an actual show, with huge chunks of missed dialogue, brutally slow pacing, and countless costume and prop malfunctions. (more…)

Curtain call at the final dress rehearsal

What follows is the saga’s final chapter: a steady crescendo of logistical challenges, costume malfunctions, police confrontations, cast-member meltdowns, parental confrontations, laryngitis attacks, and other behind-the-scenes drama — all leading up to a show that, while it may not win us any Tony Awards, nonetheless confirmed my belief in the transformational power of making art with young people, obstacles be damned.

28 days until opening night

We’re missing 30 percent of the cast yet again today (SAT prep, Regents prep, storytelling workshop, talent show rehearsal, baseball practice, didn’t-read-rehearsal-schedule, dentist appointment, forgot, mom-won’t-let-her-come-because-she’s-on-punishment, remembered-but-skipped-anyway, on-probation-for-skipping-yesterday, on-probation-for-grades, on-probation-for-being-disrespectful-about-being-on-probation). The only upside is that dedicated fifth-graders like set crew member Aminata get to step in as understudies and show off their acting chops.

25 days until opening night

Can’t use the stage again this afternoon because we got bumped by the talent show folks. After half an hour of looking for a space during which a substantial portion of the already-diminished cast scatters and has to be rounded up by a crew of high school helpers, we cram into a vacant vestibule with a boom box. By the time we buckle down to work with 15 minutes left to rehearse, I’m wiped out. Granted, no one put a gun to my head and demanded I direct a full-length Broadway show with a huge cast in a space-challenged school while six months pregnant. That one’s on me. (more…)

By the end of Part 1 of our 100-day countdown to opening night of “Guys and Dolls” at Bronx Prep, 30 percent of our cast members — including the talented 12th-grader who plays Sky Masterson — are on the verge of being kicked out of the show due to grades, I’m on my way to an expulsion hearing for the 10th-grader who plays Nathan Detroit, and as if there weren’t enough going on, I’m also launching into the second trimester of my second pregnancy.

Cast members of "Guys and Dolls" at South Bronx Prep

Here’s Part 2 of our tumultuous — but ultimately, I hope, inspiring — journey. Stay tuned for next week’s final chapter of our countdown to “Guys and Dolls,” in performance at Bronx Prep May 24-26.

46 days until opening night

The expulsion hearing for the young man who plays Nathan is emotionally devastating. All 10 people in the room are openly weeping pretty much the whole time, including the principal and the head of school, the teachers who have come to testify on the student’s behalf, the student’s mother, and the student himself.

In a heart-rending apology delivered with shaking hands and quavering voice, the young man admits that he’d gone against his instincts and committed an illegal action on a school trip in an effort to impress one of his alpha-dog friends who had challenged him to do something he knew was wrong.

His other teachers and I speak, each one us acknowledging this student’s otherwise stellar record of community service and school spirit. We wrestle with the excruciating clash between the value of zero-tolerance tough-love and the importance of judging young people’s actions with flexibility and nuance.

When the verdict is announced and the young man is asked to clean out his locker, his mother collapses with grief.

I’m late to rehearsal because I can’t stop crying.

44 days until opening night

Set crew members paint the backdrop

The expulsion, one of several stemming from the same incident, has sent shockwaves through the school, and we’ve spent a good part of the last two days packed into the gym in deep conversation as a whole school community.

It feels good to be back here in the now-empty space on a Saturday morning, painting with the set crew. When we leave, there is a sunset stretching across the back wall of the gym’s small stage.

42 days until opening night

Today on my regular D train commute from Brooklyn to the Bronx a teenage boy stands up and offers his seat. I may have officially hit the 3-month-mark on the calendar a few weeks ago, but taking the kid’s seat today is the first time this pregnancy feels fully real. I sit on the train with my hands on my belly, thinking about the mothers of the kids I teach. Soon there will be one more person in the world I care about so much it makes my chest ache.

40 days until opening night

Nathan’s understudy, a magnetic, cheerful, naturally talented 12th-grader who has never been in a musical before, misses his first week of rehearsals with his fellow leads. All week I’ve been livid, threatening to kick him out. Then I find out today that he has been attending the wakes of two friends of his who were shot and killed when a scuffle at a party turned violent last weekend. Having been shot himself in the shoulder earlier in the year — the victim of an unprovoked and unexplained drive-by — he’s not only mourning the loss of his friends but also reliving his own traumatic experience.

I pass him on the street on my way out of rehearsal late this afternoon and ask him if he’s doing OK. He pauses and musters a bone-tired smile. “Not really,” he says. Then he hugs me and says, “I’ll be there on Monday.”

37 days until opening night

Kate and creative co-conspirator, Julia

Today’s Saturday rehearsal offers a momentary glimpse of brightness. While the costume crew sorts colorful clothing, a select group of dancers learns authentic Afro Cuban dance forms from dancer/choreographer Rebecca Bliss. Not only am I proud to infuse the usually-corny Havana scene with movements that come from some of our students’ own cultural traditions, I’m also excited to collaborate with Rebecca, a former fellow high school theater cast member, and now a dear friend.

35 days until opening night

Last night at midnight, third quarter grades were posted. Most of our cast members have gotten their GPA’s up high enough to participate. But despite several weeks of intensive tutoring, support, cajoling, and follow-up, our Sky has missed the mark.

This is a kid I’ve known since he was in fifth grade. He’s extremely bright and has always excelled. I don’t know why he’s given up on himself halfway through his senior year. My instinct is that something complex is going on below the surface, but with all the buzz in the air about accountability — not just in connection with our recent expulsions, but also in the national conversations about test scores, teacher firings and school closings — I feel intense pressure to enforce the grading policy I helped create. I reluctantly gear up to tell this young actor we’ll have to replace him.

Then he walks into rehearsal. His shoulders are slumped and his usually bright eyes are vacant and dim under the brim of the baseball cap he knows he’s not allowed to wear in school.

I agonize for a second. Then my teacher hardwiring kicks in. This kid needs accountability, no doubt, but right now my instinct screams that his need for support comes first. I pull the hat off his head, mentally postpone my final decision for one more day and tell him to open his script.

His first run-through is bland and lifeless. I ask him to do it again. Little by little, the role starts to do its work on him. By the third pass, he’s standing up straighter. His eyes come to life. The lines crackle; the jokes land.

Two hours later, he has completely transformed. His diction is crisp and assured. He holds himself with confidence and poise. There is a swagger in his walk.

Still, we both know there’s an elephant in the room. I send him home and tell him that we’ll need to have a big talk before the end of the week. He nods soberly.

34 days until opening night

Dancers learn mambo and Afro-Cuban salsa

I’ve been up most of the night, partly because the baby was kicking me, but mostly because I’ve been stressing about costumes, re-choreographing the end of the opening scene to replace kids who’ve missed too many rehearsals, and struggling over what to do about Sky.

No rehearsal today. My husband and daughter come with me to my 20-week sonogram.  We find out that we’re expecting a boy.

33 days until opening night

This afternoon, after a mad flurry of emails to his teachers—some of whom are supportive of giving him a second chance, others of whom warn me that I’m being manipulated by a clever young con artist who is more like the slick-talking character he plays than I’m giving him credit for — I give Sky an ultimatum. If he’s willing to dig deep and write a letter that explains the causes of his sudden apathy, takes responsibility for his past actions, and lays out a detailed accountability plan for the rest of the school year, I will let him stay with the cast — provided he follows through on the plan he creates.

I give him a deadline of midnight tonight for the letter.

At 11:47 p.m., his email arrives. The letter attached is well-written, courageous, and heart-felt.

I decide to take the gamble.

Stay tuned for the final installment of this three-part series of posts leading up to opening night of “Guys and Dolls” at Bronx Prep. As always, the students featured in this post agreed to let me share their stories; the views expressed here are my own and not those of my school’s administration.

After eight years of making theater with urban teenagers and witnessing how challenges can be turned into fuel for creativity, I know that Orson Wells was onto something when he said that “the true enemy of art is the absence of limitations.” That’s all well and good, but I’m pretty sure my man Orson never tried putting on a full-length Broadway musical with a hundred South Bronx teenagers on a tiny stage in a school gym while pregnant and raising a 2-year-old.

Poster advertising the performance outside Room 201

Here’s Part 1 of a condensed 100-day countdown to our production of “Guys and Dolls,” in performance at Bronx Prep May 24-26. Witness the mayhem, the misery, and the small moments of grace in the midst of it all, and stay tuned for Part 2 next week.

100 days until opening night

We haven’t even decided which show we’re doing this year and already we can’t seem to catch a break. I find out today that we can’t get a performance license for the “The Color Purple,” which is the musical the student leaders of the Bronx Prep Performing Arts Academy have been clamoring to put on at school ever since they saw it on Broadway two years ago.

I’m sorry that kids who’ve shown such strong initiative won’t get their first choice, and that the now-tight timing means that teachers, not students, will choose the show this year, but I can’t say I’m personally devastated by the news. Deep in the grip of first-trimester crankiness and bracing against  one of the coldest, dreariest winters on record, I have to admit that swapping out an emotionally wrenching drama for some good old fashioned jazz-hands sounds like a great idea to me right now.

98 days until opening night

In keeping with tradition, we announce the spring show with a dramatic unveiling of a bulletin board outside of room 201. This year’s crowd of curious kids and teachers is bigger than ever. (more…)

“I can’t do this, Ms. Q. These kids hate me.” Eleventh-grader Ruth presses her forehead to the wall in the corner of the art room and sighs.

When my colleague Andrew Simon and I teamed up with Ruth and several other high school students last summer to create the Bronx Prep Performing Arts Academy, we all knew we were taking on a challenge. The program serves about 60 kids in grades 5-12. The kids are expected to grapple with sophisticated texts spanning poetry, prose, theater, musical theater and original oratory. And the whole thing rests on a model of peer mentoring and student leadership that represents a pretty radical shift away from the rigid, top-down culture I found when I first came to Bronx Prep as a theater teacher eight years ago.

In the months that I’ve been mentoring Ruth and her peers as directors and designers for our first-ever student-led musical, “Aladdin,” she’s has been the model of grace under pressure. Now I watch her bury her face in her hands and cry.

“All I want to do is support them so they can put on an awesome show,” she says between sobs, gesturing to the room next door where she’s left the cast of 40 fifth- through eighth-graders in the hands of her 11th-grade co-director. “But they won’t listen. So I have to be the bad guy. I don’t know what else to do. I yell. I give them detentions. I threaten to call parents. None of it works. And now they hate me.”

Ruth (far left) directs a dance rehearsal.

I know exactly what Ruth is going through. My own trial-by-fire as a first-year teacher may have played out nearly a decade ago, but this current experiment in student leadership has catapulted me right back to my own early days in the classroom, reliving everything the young leaders are currently facing-all the anxiety, the fear of failure, and the frustration that comes from wanting to do creative work with kids and instead feeling like a glorified traffic cop, and an incompetent one at that. (more…)

“Wait — what? I thought you were Buddhist, Ms. Q,” says Simone, a talented ninth-grade member of the theater program and speech team I coach at my South Bronx school.

“Nope,” I say. “I do a lot of yoga, but that doesn’t automatically make a person a Buddhist. Technically, I’m Jewish.”

Jewish. It’s still weird for me to say this.

“Wow, I had no idea,” says Simone. Then she gestures to the open paperback on the desk in front of her. “What a weird coincidence,” she says.

I’m sitting in a vacated classroom after school with Simone and her sister Sahirah, who are turning Lois Lowry’s classic young adult Holocaust novel “Number the Stars” into a 10-minute theater piece.

The whole situation is remarkable for a few reasons.

Number one, the sisters have taken the initiative to find their own piece of literature to adapt for competitive performance. (more…)

Kate Quarfordt is the founding director of the musical theater program at Bronx Preparatory Charter School.

I know you’re going to think I’m making this up, but I swear it actually happened, earlier this week, exactly as follows:

I’m on the D train heading up to the South Bronx, where I teach theater to students in grades 5-12. The commute from Brooklyn is a long one.

Out comes the laptop. I try to work on a draft of an article I’m struggling with. I’m supposed to be writing about making education engaging and relevant for today’s “urban youth.”

At West 4th Street I look up, my eye caught by the bouncy swagger of an attractive young kid with his hair in long thin braids. He’s maybe 13 or 14, wearing those jeans that somehow look baggy and skinny at the same time.

The kid sits down diagonally from me, takes out a Rubik’s Cube and starts working at it feverishly. He’s twisting and flipping it again and again at top speed, moving like he’s hypnotized. (more…)