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Thank you for telling this story, Mark; I find it a very compelling one--and it forms an interesting contrast to my own point of entry into city-play. I was raised in the rural South, about two hours from D.C., which was "my city"--but really: not. We didn't go there often; we had the notion of city dwellers as living in ticky-tacky houses, all thinking the same (as opposed to the cussed individualism of us rural folk). They were always caught in traffic, while we had the free road. They also didn't work like we did; work was what gave our lives value.

[Just to supply a visual of how things were: this mill, built by my great-grandfather in 1888, came down last month.]

When I finally came to live in the city of Philadelphia, I was 25 years old. At that point in my life, I loved losing the very tight grid of familiar associations and ties, the knowledge that everyone I saw knew me, and my family, and was watching everything I did. I loved the anonymity--not having to be responsive to everyone I passed on the street; I loved the freedom of being able to ignore much of what was going on around me. This felt like an increased capacity to play--and it certainly felt like a release of responsibility. So if you were experiencing the vapidity of a suburban life without associations or meaningful connections, and came to Philadelphia seeking events and scenes to tie yourself to, I found the opposite--an untethering from such connections.

Which means, I think, that we have to tread a little carefully here: for both of us, as for Brecht (or @ least as for Brecht as imagined in the poem), the city felt extrinsic--and therein lay its excitement. But we ought also to be able to offer different sorts of experiences than those that were so foundational for the two of us. We will certainly have students who have grown up in the city, whose relationship to it, and to play therein, will be very different, more intrinsic. They are the city, perhaps?

Makes me think we could start class by asking our students to write brief personal essays like the one you wrote here, and like I've also just gestured towards: how do they see themselves/what was their experience in the city?

Then, ditto re: play.