Drama High: Chapters 12-Epilogue

by Michael Sokolove
This account of teacher Lou Volpe, who built a renowned high school theater program in a struggling town, was written by one of Volpe's former students.

Here are links to our lists for the book: Chapters 1-2, Chapters 3-4, Chapters 5-6, Chapters 7-8, Chapters 9-11, Chapters 12-Epilogue
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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. banal
    repeated too often; overfamiliar through overuse
    I used to joke that it was the Disney Channel I considered pornographic, because of its banality.
  2. innocuous
    not causing disapproval
    The most current work on either list, Almost, Maine, is a pleasant but innocuous mélange of stories about love and romance in a fictional New England town.
  3. melange
    a varied mixture or assortment of things
    The most current work on either list, Almost, Maine, is a pleasant but innocuous mélange of stories about love and romance in a fictional New England town.
  4. cloying
    overly sweet
    Reviewing the Broadway production in 2006, The New York Times warned that the show could leave audience members with “the cloying aftertaste of an overly sweetened Sno-Kone.”
  5. twee
    excessively or affectedly dainty, sentimental, or refined
    “It was a little twee.”
  6. ensuing
    following immediately and as a result of what went before
    Up there from the 1970s and 1980s are The Wizard of Oz, Bye Bye Birdie, Oklahoma! and Grease. From the ensuing decades: Pippin, Hair, The Who’s Tommy, and Blood Brothers.
  7. forbearance
    good-natured tolerance of delay or incompetence
    If he unintentionally offends, he does get forgiveness—or at least enough forbearance to keep on going.
  8. cosset
    treat with excessive indulgence
    The public high schools in Bethesda, Maryland—Walt Whitman High and Bethesda-Chevy Chase—are academic hothouses that serve the cosseted classes inside the Capital Beltway: the children of government officials, diplomats, lawyers, scientists, and consultants.
  9. derisive
    expressing contempt or ridicule
    At Whitman, sometimes derisively called “White-Man,” she noticed that among the few black students at the school, several spoke British-accented English; they were the children of some kind of African royalty.
  10. worldly
    very sophisticated and experienced
    People were at once worldly—they read The New Yorker and took family vacations in Europe—and also shockingly inward-looking.
  11. stylized
    using artistic forms and conventions to create effects
    Some of the more visceral scenes...he staged in a way that was more stylized than literal.
  12. equivocate
    be deliberately ambiguous or unclear
    It was telling how Volpe responded: He didn’t equivocate, apologize, or give even an inch.
  13. propulsive
    having the power to move forward with force
    Any musical is a spectacle, a great outpouring of music, dance, and drama, staged with propulsive forward momentum, infused with appropriate measures of wit, comedy, and tragedy, all orchestrated to come together as a single piece, a story that coheres.
  14. riotous
    characterized by unrest or disorder or insubordination
    The sentiment is amplified, riotously, by all the rest of the boys onstage...
  15. arcane
    requiring secret or mysterious knowledge
    Krause is a trove of arcane factoids, most of them accurate.
  16. gilded
    made from or covered with gold
    Webb describes it as a kind of gilded cage.
  17. reprehensible
    bringing or deserving severe rebuke or censure
    It had a clear moral through line, expressed by the mother, who must make clear to her son how reprehensible his behavior was.
  18. bawdy
    humorously vulgar
    Amid it all, there is plenty of humor, much of it bawdy.
  19. despot
    a cruel and oppressive dictator
    He is a despot, far more brutal than any educator is allowed to be now.
  20. bearing
    a person's manner or way of conducting himself or herself
    He has the bearing of someone a bit older, which may be the quality that made Volpe want to put him in the role, as well as a reputation as one of the school’s Lotharios.
  21. equanimity
    steadiness of mind under stress
    Julia Steele, who is playing the very difficult role of Martha...is probably a little more pointed in her questioning than most of the others and sometimes pushes the limits of Volpe’s equanimity.
  22. myriad
    a large indefinite number
    “It’s a myriad of things going through her mind,” Volpe responds.
  23. preempt
    acquire for oneself before others can do so
    This quirk, the mics pulled from the woolen jackets, was taken from the Broadway production; every time they come out, it’s like the dusty drama has been preempted by a Sex Pistols concert.
  24. emphatic
    forceful and definite in expression or action
    She wants the turn to be fast and emphatic, not slow and leisurely like some of them are doing.
  25. peripatetic
    traveling especially on foot
    Fleming’s peripatetic career has been by choice.
  26. repartee
    adroitness and cleverness in reply
    The production itself could use some of the snap of this repartee.
  27. segue
    proceed without interruption, in music or talk
    He segues into the rhetorical tic I’ve heard before, his own call and response.
  28. fetching
    very attractive; capturing interest
    Wendla (Georjenna) is fetching, socially concerned like Melchior, but painfully and tragically innocent.
  29. mollify
    cause to be more favorably inclined
    Kelleher does not seem mollified.
  30. ratchet
    move by degrees in one direction only
    This is the point in the process when he always ratchets things up: the stakes, the bonding of the cast, the emotion.
  31. mundane
    found in the ordinary course of events
    “Sometimes people tend to seemingly mundane details before committing suicide,” he says.
  32. macabre
    shockingly repellent; inspiring horror
    Maybe this sounds macabre. Why is a teacher sharing this in the middle of a rehearsal, or at all? But the interesting thing to me, watching the cast, is how intently they are listening.
  33. sheaf
    a package of several things tied together
    A father of one of the cast members comes walking in with a big sheaf of ads.
  34. blowout
    a joyful festivity
    A Saturday rehearsal follows the Homecoming blowout, with a pit orchestra accompanying them for the first time rather than just Ryan Fleming on keyboard.
  35. seethe
    be in an agitated emotional state
    He seethes through the morning session, then starts in on the cast.
  36. maxim
    a saying that is widely accepted on its own merits
    He knows Volpe’s methods and has heard his maxims: “Go out there as far as you want, and I’ll pull you back in if it’s too much.”
  37. axiom
    a saying that is widely accepted on its own merits
    Both axioms apply here, but the unfortunate thing is that Volpe has had to impose them so late.
  38. vanguard
    the position of greatest importance or advancement
    Its moment in the vanguard was a half century ago; its last good times were in the 1980s.
  39. tactile
    of or relating to or proceeding from the sense of touch
    Somewhere in the anticipation of his move and the tactile handling and sorting and bubble-wrapping of these objects, he came to realize that he was going to leave Truman High.
  40. diffuse
    spread out; not concentrated in one place
    It was sprawling and diffuse, and even more so in the years after its anchors—U.S. Steel’s Fairless Works plant, the public pools, the churches and synagogues—fell into decline.
Created on Wed Mar 07 13:38:01 EST 2018 (updated Wed Mar 07 15:05:45 EST 2018)

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