To Serve, Perchance to Learn: A Pedagogical Play in Four Acts

Prologue

CHORUS On wooded northern plains,
a mammoth campus, Whatsamatta U,
lies within the heart of Frostbite Falls,
a vibrant metro of the North.
Research, teaching, service (so often in that order)
whirl to animate its public work.

Amidst R1s atop the academic pile
(and so near the tundra)
members of a mild department
perceived a grave disconnect
between the skills that they were trained to give
and what the world expects for grads to live.

Here, where literature and texts are taught,
the vast and silent chasm—
furlongs of unspoken and unspeakable space—
betwixt high literary theory
and worldly practice
is spanned by praxis.

The soundless canyon (canon?) filled
by nothing more than a PEEP.

The Program of Engagèd English Praxis
took shape and took the students out of class
and off of campus (and took the classroom off of campus, too)
to therefore work within the live and living
neighborhoods of Frostbite Falls—
to read another kind of text.

PEEP Scholars embrace a track
in which they now engage themselves
within an org or two and integrate
their textual study with another kind of work
that makes the texts of everyday life
context for the other texts: real life beside (besides?) the canon.

The humanities thus made more humane,
we here upon our stage will introduce
our heroes. Men and women—residents, students, scholars—
who all dare to dream that reading's more than
just an academic act, but who, with all their books, do yearn
to serve, perchance to learn.

ACT I: What to Do with Service, Literary Studies, and Learning at Whatsamatta U

Characters

MARINA a graduate student and teaching assistant

VERONICA a graduate student and teaching assistant

SONYA a former graduate student of the department and a current lecturer

MARCUS an assistant professor and PEEP core faculty member

BROCK a graduate student and teaching assistant

Curtain opens. Alone, MARINA steadfastly walks in a desert during the hottest time of the day as if toward a shaded yet lush destination. Her steps increasingly slow down, her clothes gradually feel heavier, and the sun burns redder and hotter as her destination, an oasis, seems to move farther away with every step. As she trudges along in the desert, her destination becomes more blurry and far away. She shakes her head a bit to bolster herself as the sand begins to swirl around her, the approach of a sandstorm imminent. Looking at the sun, with her hand shielding her eyes from the direct rays, she blinks as the sun slowly morphs into the dormant orb of an overhead projector that she is wheeling in front of her. Menacing ivy breaks through the swirling sand, encircling a campus building that materializes around her as a tiled floor supports her feet. She is on the main floor of the English department, and she continues to wheel the projector down a hallway, the movement gradually bringing her out of her reverie as office doors appear and she hears the distant sounds of adroit fingers on computer keyboards and the murmurs of various conversations behind slightly ajar doors. She is now at center stage. A voice calls her to attention.

VERONICA (Standing next to MARINA) Marina? They just posted our teaching assignments for the next semester in the office. Have you checked it yet? Hey, are you all right?

MARINA (Standing with the projector, shaking her head a bit, focusing her eyes on VERONICA) Uh, yeah . . . Just went to a very . . . barren place for a moment. I actually met with Val and Steph a little while ago about my course since it is a relatively new service learning course, Writing beyond the Academy. It seems to be designed for advanced undergraduate students who are English majors in the Program for Engaged English Praxis, who want and need to explore...