Like most underclassmen, that spring I was not expected to audition for one of the coveted slots in the musical Godspell. The unspoken code—the spring musical is reserved for juniors and seniors and you’ll have your chance when you’re a junior or senior—didn’t sit well with me on account of the accolades I received for my breakout performance earlier that fall.8 I auditioned anyway, “just for the experience.” A week later when the cast announcement was posted on the drama club board in the main hallway of Freehold Township High School, my name was on it! Ensemble Member #3. An absolutely unheard-of feat for a freshman.
Teachers pulled me aside all day, congratulating me for getting cast. And not just the arts teachers, even the useless ones who taught things like physics and algebra! My fellow students were happy for me, saying very complimentary things like, “That’s phat!” and “Kalpen got cast in the musical… No duh.”
The reaction at home that evening was not as inviting. I hoped my parents might be proud. That the next time Rekha Auntie called to remind everyone that Nikhil got into Yale,9 they could brag that I was Godspell’s Ensemble Member #3. But my math grades were too low the prior semester, and they blamed it on my participation in The Pied Piper. Theater is a very nice hobby, but it’s not practical. My parents didn’t think I should waste time that way. That night, they forbade me from being part of Godspell. I was more heartbroken than angry. Not being able to act in the musical wasn’t like a high school soccer player missing a goal and saying, “Aw shucks, I didn’t score. Guess I’ll continue to get straight Cs and bang my girlfriend this weekend.” It was a real emotional devastation—like a piece was missing from somewhere inside.
* * *
As the dust settled through the spring and my grades didn’t improve, it became clear that being forced to decline the role in Godspell had no effect. Despite remaining so awful at math, I somehow convinced my parents to allow me to attend a residential acting program that summer. The New Jersey Summer Arts Institute was less like a camp and more like one of those nerdy, intensive pre-collegiate schools where you all live and study together for five weeks, in this case at Rutgers University’s Livingston Campus. I wasn’t entirely sure why they agreed to send me. Maybe it was pure encouragement. Maybe they thought it would get the acting bug out of my system completely.10
The New Jersey Summer Arts Institute was my first effort at taking the creative sparks I felt onstage and in the Mississippi Masala movie theater and turning them into something more. Living and working with people who thrived on artistic expression cemented everything I loved about making up stories. Our acting teacher, Joe Russo (white, smaller build, grayish hair, midfifties, raspy voice), and vocal coach, Yvonne Kersey (African American, midfifties, booming voice, stature of a Peeps marshmallow), were perfectly matched. Since this wasn’t traditional school, Joe and Yvonne didn’t have to conduct themselves with the same modicum of professionalism.
Joe openly chain-smoked unfiltered Camels from the back row of the theater while giving notes on our scene work. (This was viewed with some reverence by the handful of students who also smoked: “That’s the last stop, man. Unfiltered. When the nicotine from regular cigarettes just won’t do it for you. The laaaaast stop.”)
Yvonne snuck her cigarettes under a tree outside and seemed softly guilty about us knowing that she smoked in the first place. Every few days she’d pat her chest and proudly remind us, “You have to take care of your instrument,” before leading a group singing exercise of the gospel song “Go Tell It on the Mountain.” This was all designed to build camaraderie and confidence, and you know what? It felt friggin’ great.
The turning point of the summer came at its halfway mark, when I got to know the other kids well enough to realize they had missing math pieces of their brains too! What we didn’t possess in the form of cranial rote memorization lobes,11 we did possess in other areas. We all had the capacity to make up stories, create characters, and feel emotions. Our minds wandered all the time. I had become close with a kid named Nathan who wore Lennon glasses, had shoulder-length wavy hair and multicolored pants, and told me he also brought home report cards that said “is a conscientious student but daydreams a lot.” An older kid named Ben—six one, bright red hair, well-built, aspiring US Marine—proudly recounted his own failed version of preggers geometry Sandra. There were other people in the world like me!
I felt empowered. By the art. By being around people who were as curious as I was, had varied interests like I did, and also found joy in the magic of telling meaningful stories. I wasn’t as weird as I thought. At fifteen, I felt like I had found my people.
In fact, the only thing that seemed to be missing was a shared background. None of the Bens or Nathans were from immigrant communities. None of them grew up hearing “We don’t do that. We’re Indian.” So, while I grew to feel grounded in who I could be as an artist, I also began to feel a strange distance from our own Indian American community because they seemed to take issue with who I am. It was a separation that wouldn’t peak until college.
* * *
Toward the end of the Summer Arts Institute, Joe assigned me a scene from a play I can’t remember the name of. All I can recall is that toward the end of the scene my character had to kiss a girl passionately, and I was completely terrified because a) I had never kissed anyone in real life and b) my scene partner was my timorous friend Jessica, who had kissed even fewer people than I had.