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The Bastardy of Administrative Ignorance
Day: The Day Playing Politics Became the Norm
Weather: Attack of the Cyclone Lillian
Knowing the conspiracy scheme of the University against the drama school, I decided to cross the road and be the mole.
It was really a bit exciting thinking about it. Getting caught in a massive evil acquisition scheme of those damn academics and working against them by working for them. It sounds so Casablanca.
I went to the library as my first stop to see my favorite librarian Angela Mitton. She has been there for years and she’s always the favorite of every student there. One can never forget her gentle smile and caring voice. She had helped us out from a lot of troublous situation in our researches. A little surprise was that both one of the voice teachers Michelle Conroy and the Head of Acting Timothy Hayes were there too - so can kill three birds with one stone. :)
Angela’s face glowed as usual as she saw me walked in. It was the same old caring soul that materialized on her kindly face. We gave each other a hug and she asked me to join in and catch up. I gave Michelle and Tim a hug each but then noticed something was wrong.
Timothy was not in his old chirpy self. In fact his eyes were red and despite Angela and Michelle tried to play down my “observation” I insisted to get to the bottom of the barrel. Reluctantly they started talking.
What happened was the new director Lillian Succubus had been raging a political storm in the School since her arrival. She claimed to be an accomplished arts administrator from overseas but she had no idea how to run a drama school. Further, being surrounded by all the people who are cream of the crop in this area in Australia really magnified her incompetence in the School. So in order to combat this, she employed three trusty but equally inexperienced people to manage all the experienced staff in the School so that she doesn’t need to deal with them directly. At the same time she started playing a divide and conquer game on them telling different stories to them thinking that they would not talk to each other and share information. However, when her divide and conquer game was busted at several staff meetings, she turned sour against these staff and adopted a bullish policy towards them through her three minions.
The latest victims were Tim and Michelle. In order to buy over the students, she took them to exclusive lunches that none of the staff members could attend and provided “Director’s Critics” sessions that only she could attend and praise the students to buy them over. When one of the productions fell flat in standard lately Tim and Michelle decided to discuss it at today’s staff meeting. When they raised the issue, she told them flatly to their faces: “You guys only know about acting and voice, what else do you know about production?” The rest of the staff was shocked by her publicly bullish and belittling behaviour but before others could jump in to support them, she said: “If there are no more pressing issues, this is the end of today’s meeting. I’m not going to waste my time when people don’t know what they are talking about and what is good for the organization” And she stormed out of the meeting room.
Tim and Michelle were obviously hurt and especially Tim who had in the previous 20 years devoted his life to the School, teaching students with all his heart. He had taught some of the most influential actors in the world who went on to win various Oscars and Emmys, not to mention countless local awards. He was furious at the same time watching the School standard crumbling in such a short time because they could not give honest and constructive critics to their students’ work anymore.
This is the first time I saw this anger in these gentle and caring teachers. Anger not because we could not live up to and deliver the standards we are supposed to deliver in our art, but anger caused by the damning politics of an insecure piece of shit.
And there were more…
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