the72: Steph DePrez - Fr. Hesburgh's High School Musical

In my overwhelmingly extensive experience as a theatre director, I’ve come to understand that rehearsal for a high school musical is tantamount to putting the wing of a hospital’s psychiatric ward on speed. Given a five minute break, students run outside, text ugly face pictures to each other, sing loudly, and pee. But mostly they just make noise. Lots and lots of gleeful, ridiculous, heavenly noise.

Heavenly? Well, friends, I found an interesting intersection between understandings of vocation this week. I found one of those juxtapositions that’s just so unusual, it begs to be put into context. During a break from rehearsing Godspell (opening March 26, tickets $10, at Xavier Prep in Palm Desert – bring your friends) I went to my computer and pulled up the live stream of Fr. Hesburgh’s wake.

Folk Choir, Basilica, Holy Cross Priests – that always gets me in the gut, right where my understanding of vocation lives, because, to be perfectly honest, in between Folk Choir Mass and summers working Notre Dame Vision, I’m pretty sure I want my ashes scattered in The Loft of the Basilica (where I spent many hours at Notre Dame singing). I don’t care if it’s gross.

I watched images of places I love and the oeuvre of Church Things Done Correctly, and my heart pat-a-pated a bit quicker. “The things! The good things! The things that taught me how to love!” I managed to fall into that semi-weepy, dangerously nostalgic place that many Domers inhabit during the alma mater (or whenever they use a Notre Dame bottle opener), and just as I worked myself into a frenzy of feels, I realized the kid playing Judas had kids lying on their backs as he fake-jumped on their faces.

“ABA, WHAT ARE YOU DOING?” Lots of screams and laughter.

And it occurred to me that the man in the casket on my grainy live feed is the man who made this crazy moment in the deserts of California possible. Here I am, in the midst of thirty high strung, stressed out kids of varying talent, all just sort of being together. They love it, because they love one another. They feel safe. They have no idea how ridiculous they look, or how annoying they can be when they won’t shut up, or how silly it is when I catch them taking – really, Lark, another duck face selfie. Because, for the two and a half ours we spend in my classroom at the end of the day, they are experiencing a freedom that my counterpart (fellow Notre Dame Folk Choir alum Emily) and I can provide because we learned freedom, passion and vocation.

As I watched the somber, emotive faces streaming from the Basilica paying homage to the man who very publicly fought for the rights of the diverse, I heard the voices of my students singing and dancing “We Beseech Thee” – white, Latino, gay, immigrant – and I knew, with deep joy, that my classroom is the living continuation of Fr. Hesburgh’s work. I have created this space for love, laughter and safe discovery because our show is a teensy little piece of the Kingdom I was once taught how to see.

My initial reaction to this revelation was, of course, to stop rehearsal, sit them down, and give Emily and myself the space to present Our Super Important Notre Dame Priest, Who You Should Know About. But it occurred to me that my students don’t need that. They know the best of him already. Because Fr. Hesburgh knew how to build a communion of Saints.

After majoring in classical voice and film at the University of Notre Dame, Steph took the linear jump to teaching theology at a Jesuit high school. She moved from fabulous South Bend to fabulous Palm Springs in 2011, where she resides today. This year, Steph took over the drama department of Xavier College Preparatory High School. She considers her shining moment as an educator to be her work planning, organizing and directing Xavier’s Choir Tour of Australia in 2014, which everyone survived. This summer, Steph will be a keynote speaker at Notre Dame Vision. Steph can be reached at sdeprez4@gmail.com.