We recently connected with Leslie Reddick and have shared our conversation below.

Leslie, appreciate you joining us today. Did you always know you wanted to pursue a creative or artistic career? When did you first know?

When I began school at Rhodes College, my plan was to major in pre-law and then on to law school. I took an acting class in my first semester to eliminate one of my fine arts requirements. I enjoyed it so much that I took Acting II. I did not care for the political science professors and actually found the classes uninspiring. I slowly began to take more theater classes until finally, I had to declare a major. It was an emotional and mental struggle because all of my life I had dreamed of being a lawyer. I knew I could go to law school with any major, but the theater seemed to bring out gifts and talents that I never knew I had. I have always been a singer. I sang in my church choir even as a teenager but to do something so precarious with my life caused me much consternation. Ultimately, I decided to major in theater. The program was actually called Communication Arts but was heavily theater with some journalism and media courses required. I had no clue what I would do with that BA in Commi Arts. I was very good at performing and directing, but as an overweight black woman in the early eighties, there were not many opportunities to perform even outside of Memphis. I am not a strong proponent of suffering for my art. I like to eat and have a decent place to live. That is a major dilemma for artists always. After graduation, I sort of floundered. I worked as an Afterschool Care Director while I looked for full-time work during the day. I finally found a job with a halfway decent wage at the TN Dept. of Human Services as an intake eligibility counselor for Food Stamps, Welfare & Medicaid. I absolutely hated it! What I thought was a way to help people turned out to be something that helped to proliferate poverty not help people when they really needed it. This job crushed my soul for seven years until, after much thought, prayer, and 21 days of fasting/praying, I decided to go back to school to obtain my master’s degree in theater. I knew that was the only way that I could be content in my life and fulfill my purpose.
Fortunately, I had not totally abandoned theater during those seven years. I had stage-managed, performed, and done other jobs at my alma mater and local theaters which helped me to be able to get into a great program at the University of Memphis. My focus was on directing. The stage was set for me to become a working theater professional. I didn’t know what that would mean for me after graduation, but I was ready to accept that call on my life.

Leslie, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I work at a 2 yr old – 8th-grade independent school. I teach 5th – 8th grade Performing Arts. Each grade level has a different emphasis, 5th – Oral Interp., 6th – Creative Movement & Dance, 7th – Advertising, and 8th – Speech presentations. I also direct two productions each year and conduct a Performance Lab between the shows to help students hone their skills in various areas. Although I did some work in the local schools while I was an undergrad, I never dreamed that I would ever be working with middle schoolers as a job. My plan after I received my master’s was to get a job teaching at the college level. But this job literally pursued me. To make a long story short, during my final year of graduate school a friend approached me about this job. Circumstances at the time did not allow me even to consider it. As the school year came to a close, I had no job prospects and this job was still available. It was June 1995. The head of the school had interviewed other candidates all year. I was the last candidate to be interviewed. By the time I got home from the interview, they had called with an offer and I became the first and only Performing Arts teacher at this school. I was and am the only teacher of color in middle school. One of the first things I encountered here was racism. This is a majority-white school. One of the missions of the school, before I came, was to have more diversity. (I am certain that was clearly one of the deciding factors in hiring me.) The students nor the parents had encountered a black teacher who was the lead teacher. There are black assistant teachers in preschool, none in lower, and me in the middle school. Many of them were used to their interactions with their housekeepers which is not exactly how they needed to interact with me. Even some of my colleagues in other divisions were not warm and welcoming to me as they had been to other new hires that year. The head of school at that time, who was an Episcopal priest, was clear to all of the faculty and staff that no form of racism would be tolerated here. He wanted to know immediately if any person of color encountered any form of racism. That was helpful and made me feel like I at least had some refuge if anything happened.
Another struggle was being the only theater teacher. I had to deal with every aspect of the program from directing to sets to lighting to props to costumes, parent communication, etc. I didn’t have an assistant to help me manage any of the jobs that were required to be done to have a successful program. Over the years, parents began to help design and build sets, helped backstage during the show, provided afterschool snacks for cast and crew, and ultimately created a booster club to help relieve some of the duties like organizing snacks and ordering t-shirts from me. It freed me to be more creative in directing. I was finally able to hire costumers and choreographers to help me. Over time we’ve become sort of a well-oiled machine.
My all-time favorite challenge has been competing with the athletic program for students. It is an age-old struggle that never seems to get better. Our school allows anyone who wants to participate in extracurricular activities to do so. Students are assessed for placement. No one is ever rejected. It’s the same for the theater program too, making it difficult to choose scripts. The students and parents know that they will more than likely never make a high school team so they go for all it’s worth in middle school. This hurts my program. We are a very small school – less than 500 students total. If 80 – 90% of them are playing sports, that means we are not left with many who want to perform. I have bent over backward to accommodate the sports kids so that they could participate in both theater and sports. Unfortunately, the coaches typically don’t feel the same and often penalize the students who participate in theater. Many students have opted not to participate in theater because of this. They are talented and want to participate but are afraid of the consequences they face from the coaches. The influence of their friends on the team is a difficult hurdle to combat as well. It can be disheartening.
There are many things that I am proud of. The most important one is I was able to raise a black son as a single mother who is a good person and driven to do and be better than the world says he should be. The people in my school community and church family helped me to raise my son to be the man he is today. I am grateful to everyone who poured themselves into his life and helped me when I didn’t have anyone else to help. I’m forever grateful for those people who loved and love us.
I am also proud of my students who have participated in the theater program. Many of them have continued participating in high school and college. I have 2 former students who were accepted to the grad program at Cal Arts, several who have received full-ride theater scholarships at some of the finest theater programs in the country, two former students who have excelled in theater at St. Andrews in Scotland, many who have won the highest awards that their high schools and colleges offer, and many are currently theater/film professionals. Then there are the ones who didn’t choose theater as a career path but learned to appreciate what it takes to participate and are ardent supporters of the arts today. I’ve received messages from students who tell me that they have used what they learned doing theater throughout their lives and that it has made a huge difference in their confidence and how they navigate the world.
I am proud that students who are “different” find refuge in the theater program. Over the years, students who are not your cookie-cutter kids have found their “peeps” with the theater kids. Many were bullied by the sports kids and felt ostracized until they were encouraged to come to perform or do tech work for a show. I cannot tell you how many of them have found solace, comfort, and kindred spirits with the theater kids. I know this is true for every theater program in the world. It can be especially meaningful in a small environment such as this. We are here for them.
I am proud of the work that I do as a director both at this school and in the broader community in Memphis. I try to always challenge my students to do quality work that they can enjoy and be proud of. We have done plays that dealt with depression, bigotry, bullying, and sexism to name a few topics. We’ve done at least nine Shakespeare plays. He’s my favorite playwright! The students have had the opportunity to script the short stories of Anton Chekhov and Edgar Allan Poe and perform those pieces in some unique staging. We even devised a piece and streamed it in September 2020 before that became a standard way of presenting theater during the pandemic. I’ve had the opportunity to direct at some of the theaters around town and at my undergrad alma mater. It is extremely difficult to break into these tight theater companies even when you know most of the parties involved because those who work primarily with adult theater think that those of us who work with children are not as talented. I guarantee that my students could stand up against practically any adult performance in dedication and quality of work. People who are seeing my students perform for the first time are very surprised at their professionalism and performance. People always say that they thought this would be just another “middle school play”, And we all know what that means. They did not expect much. They are blown away by the performances and how much fun the kids are having.
I give the same dedication and creativity to my work in the community. I have become an acting coach because of my work in the community. My specialty is classical theater. I love the plays of the past because they have endured and are fabulous teaching tools. The Greek/Roman plays, Renaissance plays, Shakespeare, etc., afford actors the opportunity to learn their craft in a more challenging way sometimes than contemporary theater pieces. In several of the shows that I have either directed or been the dramaturge for, adult performers have secured me to coach them in acting. My coaching students have secured grad school placement, jobs in local and national theater/film, and been successful in their careers. I’m proud of the work I do with them as well. I’ve also had the opportunity to workshop a piece that my friend and I compiled entitled Shakespeare’s Women. We explore aspects of love, war, sexuality/gender, and sisterhood through some of the women in Shakespeare’s plays. We’ve workshopped it twice over the past 10 years and now have a script that we feel is ready to be published soon.
At my core, I am passionate about theater and the effect it can have on an audience, the effect it can have on a performer, and how they affect the world around them. God has called me to teach using my gifting and passion for theater to encourage those in my sphere to be all that they are called to be. I am living my purpose.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

In November 2017, I was informed that I had Stage 3 colorectal cancer with more than 7 lymph nodes affected (almost stage 4). I had to undergo 5 ½ weeks of radiation to shrink the tumor sitting on my rectum, then major laparoscopic surgery to remove the tumor, remove my rectum & anus, and create an ostomy for waste to travel and release. My son was in his senior year of college in Mobile, AL. Both my parents and my middle brother have been deceased for years. My baby brother had too many problems of his own with a mentally ill wife and four sons. I would have faced this alone but for my church family and school community. I went through radiation from the end of January – the first of March 2018, five days a week for five and a half weeks. There’s a miracle surrounding the scheduling of the treatments. It would take a while to explain. The short story is that, after some finagling, I was given a treatment slot at the same time every day during a planning period which miraculously had been scheduled at the same time each day before I ever even knew about the tumor. This had never happened before or since. Miracle.
Because the tumor was sitting on my rectum, the radiation was targeted toward my pelvis area. By the end of the second week, I began to feel the effects of the radiation. It burned like fire whenever I urinated. It felt like knives were cutting through my anus whenever I defecated. Oftentimes, it would hurt so badly that all I could do was scream and cry. Then came the horror of burned skin peeling off my bottom. More tears. I worked every single day of that radiation treatment no matter the pain. By the fourth week, the radiologist could not believe that I was still working. There was no way that I could sit at home. My mental state would have deteriorated. And besides… I couldn’t because I had rehearsals!
I survived that ordeal because of my church family and school community. Church members and teachers would drive me to the hospital and pick me up after the treatment so that I didn’t have to waste time parking and walking to the place so that I could get back to school in time for my class. Working with my students kept me sane.
In May 2018 the surgeon did laparoscopic surgery to remove the tumor, rectum, and anus and create a hole in my belly to pull my colon through creating an ostomy through which my bowels would travel and release. It was a seven-hour surgery. The recovery time at home alone was very difficult. I really needed to have some counseling but didn’t get that at the time. Two months after the surgery I had to do four months of chemotherapy with the most powerful chemo meds they have. I’d go and sit at the facility for 4 – 5 hours for two of the drugs then a pump was attached to me for 48 hours for the most powerful drug to slow drip into my system. Into the second month, I began to have these intensely painful headaches from the pump drug. By the beginning of the fourth month, the pain was debilitating. All I could do when they took the pump off was go home and get into bed for the next two days. I wore the pump from Wednesday to Friday afternoon after school. I never missed a day of work. When my oncologist found I that I was still working he was shocked. He knew the effects those drugs could have on people. I told him the same thing I told the radiologist, “What am I going to do at home?”. I knew that my immune system was compromised because of the chemo, but in 20+ years I had never caught one thing those kids had. I didn’t catch anything then.
Although I was very weak and worn, God allowed me the mental strength to work every single day of my treatments. This helped to keep me sane. It made my students less fearful of me dying. I was blessed to be able to walk that journey with those around me. I learned so much about myself and some of the areas in my life that needed purging like that tumor. My faith was strengthened and my relationship with God deepened. I’m more creative and willing to take more risks since that experience. I would not trade it for the world.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

The most rewarding aspect of being an artist is being able to affect how people feel and think, both as a teacher and a director. I know it sounds pretty trite, but it is true. I tell my students that the job of the artist is to hold up the mirror to the audience. We don’t have to preach to them, just help them see themselves and humanity for what it is. With that visual in mind, maybe they will try to make the changes needed for the world to be a better place. Helping students discover who they are and who they can become through their participation in creative endeavors brings joy to my soul. There is nothing like seeing that “Aha” moment for a student or seeing the pride they feel when the audiences are literally on their feet cheering after a performance. It is an honor and a privilege to be a part of that.

Contact Info:

• Website: gslschool.org
• Linkedin: Leslie Reddick