I had the opportunity to interview our newest faculty member, Felix Clarke, about their work in theater and how they have been enjoying being a member of the Sandy Spring Friends School community so far. This interview had been edited for clarity.
Q: Do you want to just start with name, what you do at the school, and pronouns?
A: My name is Felix Clarke, I’m the new technical director and PAC overseer, and I use any pronouns.
Q: How did you become interested in and involved with the tech side of theater, and theater in general?
A: It was back when I started high school theater. I had been a performer all the way growing up since third grade, and my freshman year of high school, I decided to take a break from theater, came back, and thought I was hot stuff. I’d auditioned for “Urinetown” and thought I’d get a part pretty easily, so I didn’t try in my audition, and I didn’t get the part. I decided to be a little miserable guy about it, and decided, fine, I’ll do tech instead. And things kind of cascaded from there. I got involved in the lighting and found a huge passion for it. I got paired with a lot of mentors in Vermont Theater, where I grew up. I started doing designs for school shows, an internship at a local theater, and began learning more and more about lighting design. And that thrust me into college, and therefore, a career in theater tech.
Q: After college, what have you done in theater up until now?
A: I’ve been a designer for a queer theater group back in Vermont that was founded by some of my high school friends. It’s called Between the Willows, and I’m their resident lighting designer for their big main stage shows every year. That really kind of cemented that I want to be working full time in theater tech. I mostly did a lot of overhire at the start of my career — so that means contract positions, where you go out to various theaters and complete various tasks. The main thing that drew me to the DMVwas Imagination Stage, where I was contracted as their apprenticeship for their lighting technicians, and that got me involved in LED works and other forms of theater tech, and eventually to the point where I have started working as a technical director. I studied a lot of educational theater in college, especially theater for youth audiences, which kind of thrust me into educational work.
Q: What made you interested in working at SSFS?
A: I was at a bit of a standstill with education, where I was coming out of being very overworked and trying to find my path. And so when I came to Sandy Spring, I was very taken aback by the Quaker approach about holistic education as well as humanity. I was involved in an experimental education program that was all project-based back in my middle school, and that was the most effective schooling I had ever been through. And so if I could provide that for other children, that would be phenomenal. Just the fact that you’re not here only to learn or get into college, it’s the part of becoming a human being that you’re developing here, which I really like.
Q: What are you most looking forward to about working at Sandy Spring Friends and working with the other performing arts faculty here?
A: I’m very, very excited to lead things that are student-driven. I wholly believe in student designers and letting students shape the stage as they see it. So giving them the tools to exercise that creativity on a stage is one of the things I’m most excited to do here. I always love collaborators and working with others, and it’s always interesting to see what new faces bring to theater, so I’m just very excited to see what all of our faculty here bring to the stage and what style they bring it in.
Q: Any SSFS traditions that you’ve heard about that you’re looking forward to?
A: Well, my first week here was during community day. Community Day was also my first Meeting for Worship. That was like being thrown into the fire, but I actually really enjoyed it. I always enjoy a non-secular form of worship. I feel like that process is meditative and it was also inspiring to see the littles being paired up with the older kids and seeing students from ages of like five through 18, just being able to sit in silence for 20 minutes or more is incredible.
Q: What are some fun facts about yourself that you think are important for people to know about you?
A: I have a bit of blindness in my left eye from my shop class when I was in eighth grade because my shop teacher decided we didn’t need to wear safety glasses for a Pinewood Derby race that we did where he put CO2 canisters in the back of the cars and one flew and hit me directly in the eye and I had to go to the hospital, so that’s why I’m a big stickler on safety. I worked in Boston for many, many years. I’m a home chef as well, so I tend to bring in a lot of baked goods – other faculty have discovered that. I used to do varsity sailing back in high school. I was on several regatta teams and one time I sailed in a ship in a thunderstorm with over 50 mile per hour winds. I am also a Vermont stereotype who grew up raising chickens. I made maple syrup as a kid. I went to high school with Bernie Sanders’ grandkids. I’ve worked on, I think over 150 shows at this point, and I’ve designed at this point five productions of “Ride the Cyclone.”
Q: What else do you like to do outside of theater?
A: I’m a big outdoors person. I’m a lifelong Girl Scout, so I’m big into camping. I love just farming and gardening myself. I have a big community garden spot and I do a lot of farm to table work. Cooking is my main one, but I pretty much cook something for myself every night and love cooking for events and other people.
Q: What’s your favorite thing to cook?
A: I’m Brazilian, so one of the favorite things I love to cook is a good Brazilian country style chicken as well as pão de queijo, which is our main cheese bread everyone knows.
Q: What are some things like on your bucket list?
A: Getting more into directing is a big one, as well as acting in more shows because I have taken breaks here and there, but I love acting as well. I want to do a show with a lot of projections in it again sometime. I want to lead a sailing team at some point — it was so much fun for me in high school. At some point, I want to get to every single state in the U.S. I’ve been to 35, I’ve got to get to more of the Midwest and South soon.
Q: If you didn’t do theater, what job do you think you would have?
A: I feel like if I wasn’t in theater like I would still be a teacher of some sort — I love education, I love mentorship, getting to see young people grow into who they want be is one of my favorite things ever. So I guess I’d probably be an art teacher, but if you had to seclude me from the arts, I’d probably be an ornithologist — I study a lot of birds in my free time.
Q: What are some of your favorite pieces of media?
A: One of my favorite movies is “Song of the Sea.” I don’t remember the production of the company, but anything published by them is just utterly incredible. “Beetlejuice” is like one of my favorite movies of all time. “Wayne’s World” is like one of my favorite comedies. I’m big into anything animated, I think it is such a profound force of media, and everything new coming out recently is so good. I got into “The Owl House” when it was coming out, that was phenomenal. Back in middle school was the peak of when “Steven Universe” was a thing, so I was big into that with my partner at the time — I mean, we’re still partners to this day. I don’t like sitcoms a lot, but “Parks and Rec” is one of my favorites.
A lot of my media intake tends to be musicals. “The Old Man and the Old Moon” is one I’m hoping to direct someday. “Come From Away” is my favorite Broadway musical of all time, “Urinetown” is a musical I hope to direct again someday — that is one of my favorites in terms of dissecting a musical’s meaning. I love “In the Heights” — one of my guilty pleasures is when all-white casts do “In the Heights,” and there’s a beautiful playlist called In the Whites that is just butchered pronunciations of Spanish. Also, “Holes” is one of my favorite movies of all time. I was a Percy Jackson kid growing up, so the Percy Jackson series has a lot of meaning to me.
Q: What’s your hidden talent?
A: I feel like costumes, actually. A lot of people don’t know I do costumes. I’ve gotten really good at them, and being able to bang out stupid amount of costumes in a short amount of time is one of my hidden talents.
Q: You already mentioned a few shows that you’d like to direct or work on again. If you could be involved with a production that you haven’t done yet, which one would you want to do?
A: I’ve always wanted to direct “Metamorphosis” by Mary Kelly. That’s just one of my favorites — I know the school did it a few years ago. “Jekyll and Hyde,” oddly enough, I haven’t done yet, and I kind of want to touch that a bit more. This is gonna be so niche, but I’ve done one work by Finnegan Krukemeyer, who is a Tasmanian playwright. I like to organize his plays into the world of existentialism for younger audiences, where he writes very, very beautiful works that can be understood by younger children. I’ve never done a production of “In the Heights,” but I would love, love, love to work on one.
Q: What is your favorite memory from when you were in high school?
A: My favorite memory from when I was in high school was when I was in Vermont, we have a large theater tournament of one acts that we do every winter, and it goes from your regional area, to your state, and then if you move on from your state, you move on to New England which is just like a theater festival, and my senior year of high school we got to run the state festival at my school, and that was absolutely incredible. It was essentially an entire show of our department’s talents and our knowledge, as well as getting to see and experience theater from so many, many schools in our district.
Q: Do you tend to keep up with what’s currently on Broadway, West End, or Off-Broadway?
A: It tends to be a little bit less Off-Broadway, but I love keeping up, especially with new works. I think we’re in a bit of a cycle of trapped originality, where unfortunately a lot of original works are just being stuck in not being able to be produced, so I love, love, love seeing new works, or like even very unique adaptations of musicals.
Q: What are some recent productions you’ve really liked?
A: “A Strange Loop” was one of my favorite new works to come to Broadway. I work with the production company Between the Willows, and we are founded on new works. We did “Beasts of Crete,” which was a queer interpretation of the story of Theseus’ aria in “Name the Labyrinth,” where we got to discuss how patriarchy interrupts queer romance, and how patriarchy corrupts and also obstructs queer lives. And then we got to do “The Juniper Tree,” which is a Grimes fairy tale that we interpreted into a ballet, and it largely strokes into the themes of acceptance, and found family, joy and escapism. Yeah, I tend to just be friends with a lot of playwrights and people who nudge me towards the niche things that I end up obsessed with. Anything by Pigpen Theater Company — I mean, they kind of broke out a niche recently, but they did the music for “Water for Elephants” on Broadway and I’m just thoroughly obsessed with a lot of their work. Especially their production of “The Tale of Despereaux” for Oregon a few years ago, that was just mind-blowingly good.
I also like very fresh takes on Broadway classics and adaptations. I think that if you come up with clever adaptations of those series, they can really, really spark something. Back in 2018, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival did an adaptation of “Oklahoma,” where Curly was cast as a woman and the show was made to be more about gender and how society forces people into gender roles, where you had Judd essentially in the Nightmare Ballet forcing people into the roles that he saw them to be fit in. So I’d say that was my favorite interpretation of “Oklahoma,” and I think that’s how “Oklahoma” should be interpreted from now on.
Q: What has been your impression of Sandy Spring Friends School since you started working here?
A: I mean, I hate to put it this way, but rad as hell. Like, it’s so good to see a school that is so dedicated towards justice, as well as being so, so student-centered. I feel like a large issue we’re facing in education these days is just looking at students and going get you to college, get you to college, get you somewhere, just get you out of here, get the skills you need, This is a time to slow down, to find what you enjoy, and to still learn how to accept that process into your adulthood as well. I think that is something that I’ve just thoroughly enjoyed watching Sandy Spring not even focusing on classes that are strictly educational, because I think finding interesting ways to apply those is such a great way to focus on students. That’s what I’ve been thrilled to see while I’ve been here.
Q: What has been your favorite meal that you’ve had at Westview?
A: There’s been some really good stuff so far. I will say you guys rank number one in terms of school cafeteria food I’ve ever had. Honestly, the chicken florentine from last week was really, really good. I had it on rice and I was like, this is like a nice chicken risotto. Also the beef broccoli tofu. This is the only school I’ve ever been to that actually knows how to cook tofu.
Q: You’re about to start working on teching our school’s production of “Concord Floral” (November 14th and 15th, at 7pm on Friday and then 2pm and 7pm on Saturday), what are you most excited about when it comes to starting to work on this specific show?
A: Everything. Helping Christian build the set – well, it’s less of a set and more like we’re making a set for the audience, but it’s been a lot of fun getting the audience together for this, especially creating an intimate space for our audience. It’s a lot of moving pieces, figuring out our setup because we have things happening more localized to our stage, so we’re going to be moving a lot of stuff from our booth down to the stage. We’re bringing in new elements, like a scrim, so we’ll have some more see-through elements. This show is going to be a little bit more raw, technically; I think is the best way I can describe it, where you’re allowed to see the bones of the theater, which I think is a lot of fun. Also ghosts, so many ghosts — ghosts are one of my favorite things to light in theater. My first college show I ever got to design was a ghost story so I’m always big on how we illuminate ghosts and especially how lighting is a big element in working in horror. I always love to live in the world of what the audience is going to imagine is always scarier than what you can create on stage, so it’s a lot about using the shadow to your advantage.
We’re also updating our lighting control system and it’s going to be more accessible and show oriented in the future, so we will have a program where I can actually teach students how to do lighting. Also, if students want to learn something, come talk to me. I will gladly teach anyone about the system. I’m more than happy to show you the skills that you need, even if you’re not in my class or in the productions.
