Don’t Tell Me I Can’t

How has a failure, or apparent failure, set you up for later success?

One of the quickest ways to encourage me to do something is to tell me I can’t do it, or to speak the more passive phrase, “it can’t be done.” That’s precisely the motivation I’ve often needed to accomplish a goal.

It started at Berkeley. Professors told me I couldn’t match their academic rigor and one said outright, “I don’t think you’re capable of finishing a dissertation.” Wrong and wrong, judging from my career.

This notion of taking up a challenge continued throughout my career. A few years ago two of my students moved to LA for careers in the film industry. They immediately met with the obstacle of marketing themselves, something their respective college programs (Visual and Performing Arts and Communication) had not really taught them. It occurred to me at that point to create an Arts Entrepreneurship Certificate program, for students in the arts to learn branding, marketing, and self-promotion, along with other marketable skills (such as accounting) that would build the foundation for their eventual businesses.

I pitched it to the campus president who loved the idea. She passed it on to the Vice President of Academic Affairs (VPAA) who then told me it couldn’t be done. The reason? Because it would cost too much. (Hear that gong? The call to action!) I spent the weekend doing research, putting a proposal and a program together, and demonstrated how it could be done, adding only one course (Arts Entrepreneurship, which I would teach), and incorporating existing courses in other departments. In short order (well, a few weeks later, anyway), I was in a Zoom meeting with members of the curriculum committee on the main campus presenting the proposal. The VPAA was sitting beside me and helped me make the argument. The proposal became a program.

Of course, now here I am starting my own theatre company in Latrobe, PA. There have been those who have questioned why I would do it anyway, since I’m retired, but why in a sleepy town that has long been in stasis? Yes—that’s exactly why. Wake up, sleepy little town! The theatre’s here!