These Schools...

We are trying to get all we can get...

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When I arrived at my high school—San Francisco School of the Arts (SOTA)—to speak as an alumni, I was wearing a French astronaut costume. It was Sept, 2015. The school’s theater director, Mr. Rayher, pointed out a small glass case above the theater room in the hallway. In it was a picture of former theater students Margaret Cho and Aisha Tyler, now established comedians. A bit of wall space was still available next to them, and Mr. Rayher said he was going to put my picture there, but just hadn’t gotten to it yet. I couldn’t tell if he was saying that just because I was there. I thought of the rest of my class—no one else was up there. Past SOTA Alumni actors like Sam Rockwell hadn’t won their Oscar yet, and Iya Cash was still ascending. Was I at a level that the schools I had attended were proud that I had gone there? I didn’t feel like a success in my French astronaut costume. 

I had booked the SOTA engagement one year in advance. But over the summer, a couple of months before the program, 2 months before, I had been hospitalized in France on my way to a festival tour. By September, I was back in California, bouncing around Airbnbs, weary that I couldn’t find a place. I remember it was very important to me to keep my speaking date at SOTA. For my festival tour that went awry in France, I had packed all my costumes. I was booked for seventy-five shows in Edinburgh, and Frankfurt. One of my costumes was from a French astronaut that made me look like a ghostbuster. I found it at ACE Hardware in Richmond, CA. I had worn it for my discharge from the hospital in France and my flight back home to California, where my dad picked me up. We took this picture the day of my discharge—like we were blasting off into the cosmos of international travel. I wore the suit for my talk at SOTA.

In my experience, it takes more than a couple of months after a hospitalization before an actor should perform publicly or do any further travel. If you have to go to a mental hospital, give yourself six to nine months to reach a sense of stability before you do anything like giving a presentation where your audience expects to learn from your example of success. 

And so … I walked into the high school where I had graduated twelve years before. I was flooded with memories—all the kids I went to school with, all the teachers I had had. Almost flunked out because I was over-medicated. Sleeping in the library on the couch chairs for most of the day. Going to class and sleeping straight through and then being offered extra credit assignments so I could pass, and still not being able to do that work.  

Mr. Rayher and I had a past. I remember how he had tried to convince me to switch departments to creative writing, so I wouldn’t be his problem. When I thought I was Jesus, I wanted to show that the Messiah is a Hip Hop Absolutist. Beatbox, raps, and speaking with no sensor, pure channel. I’m sure I could have changed to creative writing, but that would have affected my independent study to create a solo show. I had completed one page that I was supposed to read at one of the public school plays but never did. So, I stayed in the theater department but wasn’t allowed to be in any of the productions or attend any of the classes. I was a nomad. Part of my senior year at SOTA, I had an IEP, an Individual Education Plan, where the school would essentially leave me alone in the computer lab with very little supervision. The other kids in the lab with me were in wheelchairs with serious physical disabilities. 

Technically, I was still in high school, but I wasn’t making grades. My report cards had a lot of Fs, and Is—“incompletes.” SOTA’s principal Don Harris made sure I graduated in theater and on time and held a meeting to make that happen with my parents and Mr. Rayher.

When I went back to speak to SOTA students twelve years after my graduation, two other young alum speakers were also there. My talk was last, with more time available, and I gave a kind of inspirational message about where these students were positioned with their theater background. Then Mr. Rahyer asked me to go into “my story”—talk about what happened to me. I don’t know why that surprised me but it did. I spoke briefly—two or three minutes—about what I had struggled with, the kind of stuff I would save for an hour-long lecture. I guess I had thought I wouldn’t talk about that experience if he were there. Did he want me to include that he didn’t want me to be in the department? 

One of the students at my talk told their English teacher I had come by, and he then called me to come by and speak to his class. He said he was a fan of mine and had shown the class my TED Talk. He had a positive outlook: “This guy went here to our school and went on to bigger things.” I talked to his class for the full fifty minutes and unpacked all I had gone through, all I had done at the school, and what I wanted to do. The teacher brought me back the following year. 

I feel good about talking to kids at my old high school. I think you have to be somewhere in your life to come back and tell your stories to the next generation. I’m not sure that’s where I am right now but I’m trying to get there. Fame was never what I wanted or sought. But in looking to make bigger moves as an artist, I have moments of rehearsing that inspirational talk, for the next graduating class.

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