Illustration by Anna Keith
We're all out there wishing we were somebody else. The fantasies get channeled into reality TV, elaborated in traffic jams, acted out in misguided flings and midlife crises, displaced onto our children … They suck up so much energy, they're probably responsible for global warming.
COCA's solution? Secret Ambition, summer school for grown-ups. For five Tuesday evenings in July, you can play at becoming a circus performer, a rock star, a movie star, a pastry chef, a Broadway tap dancer or a master painter.
The common denominator, of course, is the chance to show off. Daring a flying trapeze, shuffling 42nd Street's famous choreography onstage, splashing your soul onto a canvas, hearing your rock ballad amplified for posterity. Letting your secret, stunning talent blaze bright enough to blind the world—or at least dazzle your COCA classmates, before you leave class to drink wine in the COCA gallery and laugh about how hard it must really be to do this stuff for a living.
You don't have to be any good to take one of these classes; you just have to want it.
With the circus course, the appeal's "the thrills and the chills," says instructor Josh Routh, a founding member of Circus Kaput and the comedic troupe Brothers Kaputnik. "People are always infatuated with daredevils. And there's the romantic side, the whole idea of running away to join." Most days, juggling, balancing and wire-walking are just metaphors for stress response. Here, they'll be feats you can demonstrate the next day at the office.
But what happens when the amateurs flub up—how's COCA going to make it safe? "We don't do anything safe," Routh retorts. "We put broken beer bottles and rusty nails on the ground for them to roll around in." He waits a beat, then turns serious. "A lot of spotting."
Teachers will also create emotional safety: "Broadway tap is a little larger, not as intricate as other tap," dance instructor Sarah McKenney points out, "and we are not going to worry how they look in the mirror." Brooke Edwards, who's teaching the rock-star course with Tory Z. Starbuck, figures all they have to do is show up—she in stage garb from her band GLOW, Tory with his magenta Mohawk—and the students will relax.
(Starbuck's not even sure what he does is rock 'n' roll; he says the sound's more like "Ziggy Stardust went over to Egypt and then took the instruments up to Saturn." In a guttural rock-star voice, he mock-sings, "I'm gonna kick your ass." "My, that's so cutting edge," he says dryly. "When you have to talk about the genre— 'I'm going to rock you'— you're trying too hard.")
Tuan Nguyen, whose paintings have been shown on both coasts, wants his course on painting a masterpiece to demystify the very idea of the masterpiece. Painting, he says, is a process of uncovering your ideas about the world, of learning "to see and to recognize what you see—and anybody can do that," he says. "You don't have to be a genius to make a painting." Nor do you have to copy another artist's style: "That way, you're just seeing the world through somebody else's lens. The purpose of painting is to figure out your intention."
Nguyen wants to relax students into trusting their own vision. Over at the circus, though, Routh isn't the least bit worried about relaxing his students. "If somebody's willing to take a circus class, they're not coming in with too many anxieties," he points out. "This isn't therapy."
Except, of course, that it is. July will be one long celebration of self-expression. "I had one guy say, 'Oh, I can be Tyler Perry,'" chuckles veteran acting teacher Kate Frisina, who moved here after 20 years' steady work in L.A. "I said, 'Honey, I don't want Tyler Perry. There's already a Tyler Perry making money. This is about being yourself.'"
Which is a lot harder than fantasizing. "Especially in St. Louis," Edwards says, "people get to a certain age and become inhibited: 'Oh, I can't act that way anymore, because I'm 30 and I'm married.' Well, yeah, you can."
Classes meet at 7 p.m. every Tuesday in July at COCA,
524 Trinity, 314-725-6555, cocastl.org.
