Lessons in Passion : A Storytelling Guru Spins a Tale of Teaching

I was in line at a Santa Monica theater last year when a writer out walking her dog suddenly darted through traffic and, aglow with the ecstasy of an Emmy nomination, thanked me for her career.

I’ve been teaching the art of story in L.A. and around the world for many years, and when students credit me for their success I’m always gratified, but also amazed by how much the little I did means to them.

I wonder if teachers ever fully realize the power they have to shape our lives. With each word and gesture, a teacher places a stone on the scale of life. If an idea doesn’t add weight to our knowledge, it subtracts--either as a fallacy that misleads our thinking or a triviality that blurs it. Fine teaching isn’t only what is taught but how it’s taught--a passion for the subject. As I look back on my education, I’m struck by my incredible luck. By sheer serendipity, I was the privileged student of superb teachers who fused the link between teaching, art and life.

When I was first learning to read but not always behaving appropriately, my father purchased the fables of Aesop. Each evening he would conduct a tutorial. After I mouthed my way through the likes of “The Fox and the Grapes,” he’d ask, “And what, Bobby, does this story mean to you?” As I stared at these cautionary tales and their handsome illustrations, I came to realize that stories mean far more than mere words and pretty pictures. In his eccentric way, my father taught me the love of story.

Like many of his generation, my dad was scarred by a Depression-era childhood and the nightmare of World War II combat. Yet, in his cryptic, off-the-wall way, face locked in a Robert Mitchum scowl, he could gift-wrap the most painful experiences in a ribbon of philosophy.

One day I crossed words with some older kids who taught me a lesson written in a split lip. I stumbled home to my father, who took my face in his hands and said, “Stop crying. You’ll beat all those bastards once you understand the secret to happiness: Make your vocation your avocation.” I was 8 and had no idea what he was talking about, but his mnemonic phrase stuck and in time made beautiful sense. The day you find the courage to do for a living what you would do for fun, the bullies of life--fear, failure, doubt, dread--melt away.

In fourth grade I met Miss Henderson. Ah, Miss Henderson. Imagine warm, brown, knowing eyes, honey-blond hair in a Carolyn Jones pageboy, hands stroking chalk and eraser over the blackboard like an angel caressing her harp. We were all in love with her. When, on the last day of school, she told us of her pending wedding, the hearts of a dozen little boys cracked like eggs in a dropped box. The year before I was a D student, but inspired by her skilled teaching, my report card became a string of A’s that read like the sigh of relief breathed by my worried parents. Dear Miss Henderson taught me the joy of learning.

In my sophomore year at the University of Michigan, I was an undeclared major, still unsure of what “do for a living what you do for fun” meant for me. By chance, I enrolled in a lit class taught by John Arthos. His first assignment was Faulkner’s “The Bear.” The next morning he polled the class, asking: “What does this story mean to you?” Slowly, student by student, it became painfully clear that not one of us had bothered to read it. Arthos snatched up a chunk of chalk and hurled it over our heads. As the chalk exploded on the wall he said, “Don’t you understand? This is art!” I was stunned. Arthos was a temperate man, gracious and witty. His sudden passion electrified me.

With renewed patience he took us step by step through the story, using an “as if” technique. For each character, image or action he’d reach out for a comparison--imaginative, ingenious parallels plucked from his vast knowledge of psychology, physics, mythology, the Civil War, Micronesian incest taboos, or the mechanics of internal combustion. From the infinite points on the living compass he’d surround each sentence, paragraph and story with the light of meanings and feelings sparked by the universe around us, until the mind of every student was ablaze with a cogent truth.

A work of art, Arthos taught, is imbued with and embedded in the stuff of life. Thanks to him, I knew that my life would have to be lived within the world of art, and by the time I reached grad school, I’d found my way to the theater, studying performance and playwriting. My acting coach was Claribel Baird, a 30-year veteran of the New York stage. At 70, she underwent a series of surgeries, but still she worked every day, shoulders hunched in pain, skin almost transparent.

One afternoon we were rehearsing “The Way of the World,” a Renaissance comedy built around very sexy female characters. But no matter how our actresses flounced and pouted, none could capture the licentiousness of these roles. Finally, Baird said, “No, no, ladies.” She offered her arm and I assisted her to the stage. “It’s really very simple,” she said. “Assume a good posture, walk smoothly and think dirty thoughts.” She then drew her frail body up tall, and without gesture or smile, moved across the stage with sensual grace, radiating a fiercely erotic aura. By an act of pure concentration and craft, this woman three times our age turned us on. Jaws dropped; blood rushed; we understood.

We called Baird “The Goddess of Truth” because our greatest fear was that after doing a scene she’d utter those dreaded words, “I didn’t believe you.” And I well remember the day when I feared that and much worse. I was doing a scene from “Summer and Smoke” in which my character learns that his father has died. A scene of feral anguish. A scene demanding tears. But my own father had taught me that men don’t cry, so I was faking them.

In the middle of my feigning, Baird rose from her chair and joined me onstage. “I’m going to help you, Robert,” she said. “Start again, but whatever happens, don’t stop.” I went back to my mark and began from the top. She moved behind me, so close I could feel her breath on my neck. Although I couldn’t see her, I could feel through my shirt the heat of her grief. I sensed her quiet sighs and sobs. From one moment to the next she was flooded with the emotion I should have been feeling. And you know how it is. When someone close to you cries, you cry. The dam broke and tears were never a problem for me again. Claribel Baird taught that the deepest truth is emotional truth.

In those days, I studied playwriting under Kenneth Rowe, a master dramaturge who taught the classic principles of story art to the likes of Arthur Miller and Lawrence Kasdan. As young artists, however, we loved the theater of the absurd and wanted to write antiplays. Rowe knew that the geniuses of the avant garde--Beckett, Ionesco, Genet--only seemed spontaneous. So he put his foot down: “You’ll write a three-character one-act play. You’ll hook our interest, build involvement and pay off with a solid climax in 20 minutes. Learn to do that with skill and power, then you can write about bickering bananas in ashcans.” Rowe taught that though the shape of drama is endlessly variable, without a unifying principle a story is a sprawl, not art.

Years later in Hollywood, I became a busy TV writer with a stack of sold screenplays that, for various reasons, had incinerated in development hell. One day a film school called to ask if I’d like to fill in for a month, teaching screenwriting on Saturday mornings in the basement of the Zephyr Theatre. It sounded like fun, and it was fun. I discovered that all my best teachers were still alive in me, and it was a joy to carry on their tradition.

The school called again, and to my amazement the class size doubled and kept doubling. Now, four times a year, screenwriters, playwrights and novelists pack the theater in the belly of the Pacific Design Center’s big blue whale, bringing with them a fertile creativity driven by dogged desire. Over time, their talent, and the sweat they poured into it, earned my students--from Terrence McNally to John Cleese, Quincy Jones, Carrie Fisher, Joel Schumacher and Meg Ryan--numerous Oscar, Emmy, Cannes, Golden Globe and Writers Guild awards and nominations. Meanwhile, invitations came for me to lecture in Rome, London, Copenhagen, Paris, Berlin, Singapore.

At first the grind of travel threatened to dull my creative work. But because teaching teaches the teacher, the seminars in fact sharpened my craft, while my writing honed the lectures. What’s more, perceptive questions from my students were sending me further and deeper in search of answers. My odyssey came full circle when I put these years of lecturing and learning into my book, “Story.”

I always wanted to be a hyphenate but never guessed it would be writer-guru-nomad. The scales of my life are in balance, thanks to those wise souls who, decades ago, put a steady, knowing hand on my shoulder. By passing on their gifts, I hope to strengthen the talent in others and somehow repay the priceless debt I owe to my teachers.