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For Jeff

For Jeffrey M. Potter-Watts

Dear Friends, as part of grieving and honoring my dear friend and mentor Jeff Watts, I’ve written a short piece about how he shaped my life.

Jeff/ Mr. Watts was introduced to me in the year 2000 as our new theatre director while holding auditions for Pygmalion in the Lawrence High School gymnasium. I was fifteen years old, full of spunk, imagination, and an earnest attempt at worldliness. Mr. Watts seemed to arrive from another era, dressed in black dress shoes, a vest, and doling out phrases like, “It would behoove you to arrive on time and warm your vocal chords.” Although he didn’t actually wear a pocket-watch chain draped across his chest, he seemed to, in spirit. What I mean is, Jeff’s aura was both punctual and nostalgic. His demeanor was disciplined and wistful.

Wistful. Jeff was the first person I ever met who cared about words more than I did. He had a favorite word! “Wistful,” he’d say to us, rolling the word out of his mouth like it was his own name. “Wistful sounds exactly like what it is. Everyone write down a list of your favorite words: words that please you, words that sound good when you say them.” He encouraged every student, and unveiled joy from words like “cantankerous” and “warble.”

My sister and I reminisced today about his favorite vocal warm-up, “Moses supposes his toeses are Roses / Moses supposes erroneously / for Moses, he knowses his toes aren’t roses, as Moses supposes his toeses to be.” Jeff was a total perfectionist, and wanted us to succeed, which is why he taught us all of his vocal techniques. He was also completely silly and zany. One thing I learned from him is that work ethic and playfulness are not antithetical: if you want to create art, you must have both, and he lived these values daily.

Jeff was a professional theatre artist: Director, Writer, Costume Designer, Actor and Producer. He treated us all with the respect and high expectations of fellow professional artists, naming us “Lawrence Theatre Company” instead of calling us the Drama Club. Because Lawrence was mainly a sports school known for football and basketball, I like to think of the theatre kids as a kind of rag-tag arts-team, á la The Mighty Ducks before he came along and whipped us into shape. He’d hate that kind of sports-movie analogy, and tease me for it, I know, but I can’t resist.

High School was painful and confusing for me, like it is for anyone with nerve-endings and a soul. I had few friends, and longed to live in a bohemia of great artistic minds. More than anything else, though, I wanted to belong. When I met Jeff, my parents’ divorce was a fresh and ongoing wound, so home life sometimes felt like a house with no floors. The theatre became my sanctuary, my second home. After rehearsals, a few of us would gather around Mr. Watts while he packed up, and we’d listen to him talk. He’d recount the day’s events, or another play he had directed, and we were spellbound and grateful. There was a true ritual to any time spent with Jeff, a real sense of oral tradition, and he made me feel accounted for, just by including all of us in his vision.

And of course I loved him. For many reasons:

His unabashed disdain for realism. “Realism,” he’d scoff, and roll his eyes. “I want magic.” It is wonderful, especially at a young age, to encounter someone who knows himself.

I loved his insistence that he was apolitical, despite his consistent Brechtian approach to theatre. And it’s true; I never heard him utter a political opinion, but his plays were all about justice, compassion, and grace. These ideas continue to guide me in my own life, personal and political.

Jeff was the first person with whom I had Real Intellectual Debates. He valued my mind, and made me believe in my own capacity for intelligence and growth. We continued to have intense discussions about Feminism and Art even while he was in the hospital in New York City last winter. He was open-minded, and learned from me, he said.

I loved his bright-blue wide listening eyes, and how he’d nod his head vigorously while he listened.

I loved his almost-maniacal cackle.

I love how he went on daily “constitutionals” and actually used the word constitutional.

He was the only person to call my brother Sam “Sammy.” He came to my Mom’s house and decorated Christmas cookies with us and became part of my family. When it was time to apply to college, I knew I wanted to study acting, and he helped both me and my sister work on the monologues that got us into Emerson College.

My first winter break home from Boston I asked him to have dinner with me on New Year's Eve, and we went to Ruby Tuesday's in Waterville and ate chicken with mashed potatoes. I was thrilled to spend the evening talking with one of my favorite people, instead of being trapped at a lame party agog with noise-makers and Jäger. Some friends teased me about it being a date, but nothing romantic ever happened between us. He was a true friend, and always treated me like a strong woman. It's amazing how much easier it is to take yourself seriously when someone else has consistently reminded you of your own worth.

When I was considering moving to NYC, I called Jeff for advice. "Come, April,” he encouraged me. “You won't regret it. You'll grow, I promise. What have you got to lose?"

And he was right. I moved a year and a half ago, and have found a rigorous community of poets and theatre-makers. One of my favorite memories was seeing Jeff's play "Redemption of the Vampyre" at a theatre on 42nd Street. He had just undergone surgery, and days out of the hospital he was at work, staging a production. That's where this photo is from.

It feels unfair that he was taken from us so soon. I don’t have any eloquent way to end this small essay. I can’t imagine the shape of my life without him, and I hope to live my life in a way that would continue to make him proud.

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