In the late summer of last year, or perhaps it was the early autumn . . .

At Mason Gross School for the Performing Arts time warps and wanders in all the emotional, physical and intellectual activity.  In my two years there, I seem to be best able to mark the days by the mean temperature in Walters Hall.  If it is teeth-chatteringly cold, it must be late August or early September.  October and November are muggy.  December and January are by turns toasty and nippy.  February and March are suffocatingly tropical.  And April is the cruelest Month.  

I can’t actually remember when it was that Barbara Marchant (co-chair of the Theater Department) first and then Casey Coakley (Dean of Students) mentioned to me that the Rutgers global studies program was looking for someone from the theater department who would be interested in leading a group of students to Paris.  

Yes. I was interested in taking my Global Theatre class global. Yes. Getting on the road.  Why not start in Paris?  We'll always have Paris. Writing up the proposal was a easy.  I was quick to recruit Beth Clancy, a respected designer and cracker-jack research scholar who teaches an innovative core class to first year actors — Culture and Clothing.  The class is an examination of the history, psychology, fashion and art.  What better co-conspirator for Paris?  Theatricality and Fashion in the City of Lights.  Oui. The syllabus fairly wrote itself.  My scholarly wheelhouse was spinning.

It became quickly clear that ambition might outstrip reality.  Beth’s schedule, as professional and parent, was tight.  The Paris theatre season trickles to an almost stop during the summer months.  The expenses were looking to be great and some of the contacts in France were proving to be problematic.

What to do?  There are even better theatre cities.  London (but we’ve got that covered with our program at Shakespeare’s Globe), Dublin,  Prague, Saõ Paulo . . .

Berlin.  Yes.  Berlin is hip.  Berlin is happening.  Yes. The director Thomas Ostermeier whose work I admire works out of Berlin.  Berlin is cheap . . . cheaper.  Berlin has a great theatre scene — past and present.   I’ve spent a lot of time recently in Germany. Ja.

So Berlin replaces Paris.  The theater of Molière, Voltaire, Dumas and Beckett replaced by Goethe, Schiller, Brecht and Shakespeare.  More about Willy and the Germans later.

It’s taken over four months to plan — with invaluable help from Enrico Picelli and Giorgio DiMauro.  But we are now days away from our trip.  One professor.  Ten students.  Three weeks.  Fourteen performances.  One workshop.   Museums, palaces, gardens, stages, streets and shops yet to be counted.

It’s now getting colder in Walters Hall as the air-conditioning gets cranked to high and summer shirts have to be covered with sweaters.  It must be May, so we are headed to the Grey City.

Alles, was uns begegnet, läßt Spuren zurück. Alles trägt unmerklich zu unserer Bildung bei. — J.W. von Goethe