I Guess I Should Say Something

A colleague of mine died last weekend. Although he had previously retired, Cletus Anderson remained a presence in the School of Drama until recently when health problems made his involvement impossible. He was a gifted artist and an inspiring instructor and he will be missed by all of us.

I had the privilege of being both a student and a co-worker of Professor Anderson. My first memory of Cletus is a sort of incongruous thought. The thought is that he wasn't there. The fall I began as a student in the Drama department Cletus and his wife Barbara were away working on the movie Monkey Shines. So until after mid semester our Basic Design class was taught by Bob Perdziola - just one of many of Cletus' former students now making a living as a designer in our business. It was probably good that I started the semester with Bob, as when Cletus returned he was absolutely daunting and I think had he been there on the first day of the first class I might have just folded up right there and then.

Cletus always had a good sense of humor once you were attuned to it. One time while we were working on a watercolor project I had inquired how I might improve the piece I was working on. Cletus asked me: "have you got a match?"

At the time I wasn't attuned. Or maybe that wasn't supposed to be funny.

Another time I remember quite clearly was during a night of crew that I (ok they) had the misfortune of my being assigned to the costume shop. I'd been sent into stock to look for something and come back empty handed. Cletus took me back into the stock room (I assumed to demonstrate my rampant incompetence) and looked for the items himself. After a couple of minutes he muttered "Sometimes life is just a great big bowl of shit." It was the first time in my experience I had ever heard a teacher curse.

While working on the Television Project my senior year we did a piece called "Confetti." It was supposed to be a wedding reception in the basement of a church. Cletus had made a wedding cake for the shoot. At that time I found out that he did projects like that on the side and had had a lot of kitchen experience in his past. Who knew?

I didn't have a whole lot of interaction with Cletus as a faculty member. Clearly he was still scaring freshmen and upholding a high standard for performance. He had been notoriously hard on people, or more accurately difficult for people trying to spin at critiques. More recently as I have become known as someone who doesn't shy from throwing a high inside fastball when it is required some people have called me "the new Cletus" of crits. I would certainly take that designation with honor.

I guess I had surprised him some in my development. After a meeting once he stopped me and asked "When did you become so wise?" It made my day to have the compliment. It would be nice to belileve he thought he had something to do with the growth.

A year or so ago I got myself hired to work on a project working as a draftsman. Cletus was the designer. I don't think I did a very good job. It was interesting to me that near on 20 years later I still felt like that working on a project for him. It is a sort of gift he had I think, without having to say so always making people feel like they could do a better job for him and in such a way that the next time you wanted to do a better job. That's something I wish I could bring to my work.

Perhaps I will have to keep Cletus in mind when critiquing a student's work. Although I'm not sure I'll ever ask a student if they have a match.