Name: Andrea Hairston
Age: 54
Careers: Professor of theater, Smith College; artistic director, Chrysalis Theater; science fiction novelist
Tell me about are your careers.
I am a professor of theater at Smith College. I teach writing and literature, and I teach a class on minstrel shows. I also teach a course on science fiction and fantasy. I'm also the artistic director of Chrysalis Theatre, producing new theater pieces and doing educational theater and cultural exchange. And I'm working on my second novel, Exploding in Slow Motion, which should be done in three or four weeks. I have a publisher who's interested.
What do you like about teaching?
The students are the best part. I really like teaching, and I really enjoy exploring a topic, an idea, a process with them. I've also directed plays with 18- to 22-year-olds. It's an incredible challenge to work with people who are just encountering some of the critical questions, to present to them a body of knowledge and have them challenge me in return.
What's the best part of your theater work?
I've been doing theater since high school. I feel like I've been doing theater my entire life. When I was right out of grad school, I guess it was the 70s, I decided I should start a company that would do new works and have a broad cultural reach. I was really interested in West African culture and traditions. I was also interested in modern European drama. I had a group of people - musicians, actors, writers - who were also interested. Some of us have been working together since 1978, producing plays, doing poetry, doing music theater events. We've been a socially aware group, and we want other people to do theater too. We've done plays with pregnant and parenting teens, social workers. We've always been about having people understand they can have control of what they want to say about the world.
You got into novel-writing fairly late, didn't you?
I was a playwright until recently, and wrote poetry. I never wrote short stories. I studied screenwriting and playwriting in grad school. But I had some huge stories! I was at the University of Hamburg in Germany teaching a course on African-American women writers. It was a real challenge. I thought "if I can teach German college students about African-American women playwrights, I can write a story." I started with a world, an idea.
In 1999 I went to a science fiction and fantasy workshop. You come and you spend six weeks with other writers. I met some amazing writers. I really started understanding "this is how I can do it." Most of the people in this workshop were in their 30s or 20s, and I was in my 40s. It was very exciting to have a mix of ages as well as interests.
I wrote one book which is still not published, and I wrote a second one, Mindscape, starting in 1999.
I've been going to lots of science fiction and fantasy conferences and getting to know the community. It's very different from the theater world - a whole new landscape. WisCon is a feminist science fiction convention, and it's absolutely amazing. I've also written some scholarly papers on science fiction and fantasy. It's been really a rewarding and intriguing journey.
What was your first job?
I was going to be a physics major. I spent a lot of summers going to school. One of my first jobs was as a math textbook editor for Houghton Mifflin. It was very interesting getting an inside view of how we write books to get people to understand things that were difficult for them. I also worked one year with young people clearing brush in Springfield. We had to clean up all these urban wastelands and it was really hot and nasty. We were trying to make the city better.
In my theater group I worked with a group of "juvenile delinquents." We were to get these kids to write a play and be socially responsible. We got them to come up with their own idea. They had a really good sense of right and wrong and values and so forth. We facilitated them doing it. It was very successful and exciting.
What are your hobbies?
I am an avid cyclist and I really love yoga. I really love to just get on my bike and go for long rides. I've indulged myself and I have three bikes for different terrains. I've been working on one yoga pose for I-don't-know-how-many years, and I'm finally getting it!
When you were 35 (or 45) when did you think you would retire?
I do theater and writing, so I assume I'll do that till I drop. I think some people have jobs and I have a vocation. You do art until you can't, and that seems to be pretty much a whole lifetime. I was at a conference and Ursula LeGuin was there, and I think she was born in the '20s, and she's still writing her books. Ossie Davis, who died last year, died in the middle of shooting a film. His wife was somewhere else working on her film. That's my sense of how you are in the arts.
What was your most challenging job and why?
I feel like being a theater artist is really challenging because it's almost an anachronistic art form. Television and videos are so much more accessible and supported by the culture. It's a real challenge to get funding, to get an audience, to get people to take you seriously. I do plays that are about social change, not necessarily feel-good comedies. I think it's been a challenge to hang in there with theater and with the arts. Writing a novel is very different than doing a play. You don't have other people with you. Being an artist is a challenge in our cultural setting. There are a lot of things that can just stop you completing your work. There are days I want to throw my novel in the trash, light it on fire, and get on my bike and go for a ride.
I grew up in the '50s. I went to Smith in 1970 and graduated in 1974, and that was one of the first classes that had a lot of black women in it. That was a challenge. I find myself coming to places where people like me have not been before. There are not that many black women who write science fiction and get it published. People are surprised that you do it. I have a very good group of people who support my work.
If there was one thing in your career you could change what would it be?
You know, I don't have regrets. I think everything that has happened to me has been worthwhile. I like who I am now. I think I started writing science fiction when it was the right time for me to write it. For the future, I would like to have more time to write, and I am working on that.
Who was/is your role model?
I had lots of role models! Lots of amazing writers. Someone like Alice Childress, who was a novelist and a playwright. I saw a play of hers in 1969 on public television. I saw it with my mother, who was a definite role model for me. I thought "I have to do that." I was still going to be a physicist, as my family wanted me to, but in the back of my mind was "But you can also write plays."
What advice do you have for people 50 and over who are looking to develop creative careers?
Get together with a group of other people who do what you do. I have a group of writers who have been meeting on and off for about seven years. The people in my group range in age from 34 to 60. We are all committed to each other's work. Some of us have gone on a retreat for a week - left all of our families behind - and really solidified our connection. Several of us have published, and it's been very helpful. So I would make a group, and explore possibilities together. All that consciousness-raising from the '60s and '70s? It still works.
