Curriculum / Track 05 · The Wu
Track 05 // The Wu

The Human Touch.

Where the work finally meets people. Twelve years on the community stage, volunteer architecture for civic institutions, and the facilitation of rooms full of strangers. Every other track is a structure built in private; this is the part done in public, with an audience: the place where rigor turns into rapport.

Module 05.1

05.1The Stage as Interface

Community theatre is the real-time processing of a complex script for a live public: the stage functioning as a user interface, the performance as the delivery mechanism. Twelve years of it, mostly Shakespeare, with the occasional musical: the same editorial ear that tunes a sentence, applied to the rhythm and pacing of spoken dialogue. The dated log runs from The Tempest in 2012 to Much Ado About Nothing in 2020; the wider canon also includes Romeo and Juliet.

Specimen · Performance Log 2012 – 2020
2012 · May Bye-Bye Birdie Musical
2012 · Sep The Tempest Shakespeare
2013 · Sep Twelfth Night Shakespeare
2014 · Sep The Merry Wives of Windsor Shakespeare
2015 · Feb Shrek Musical
2015 · Sep The Taming of the Shrew Shakespeare
2016 · Feb Mary Poppins Musical
2016 · Oct Macbeth Shakespeare
2017 · Sep As You Like It Shakespeare
2018 · Sep Measure for Measure Shakespeare
2019 · Sep Julius Caesar Shakespeare
2020 · Mar Much Ado About Nothing Shakespeare
Fig. 5.1 · Nine Shakespearean productions and three musicals: one stage, 2012–2020.
  • The Shakespearean Run. A near-annual September production: comedy, tragedy, and history in rotation.
  • Musical Register. Bye-Bye Birdie, Shrek, and Mary Poppins: the resonance of presence over the logic of classicism.
  • The Editorial Ear. Live performance as the source of an instinct for dialogue rhythm and pacing.
Community Theatre Shakespeare ×9 Musicals ×3 2012–2020
Module 05.2

05.2Civic Architecture

Systems thinking turned on community life. The professional toolkit (Drupal, content modeling, version control) applied as volunteer work for the institutions of a single New Jersey town, where the real deliverable is connection rather than code. The recurring move is the same one: take something kept on paper and rebuild it as a living, accessible structure.

  • Lincoln School PTA: Webmaster (2005–2011). Launched and ran the PTA's first website; ported the parent/student directory from hardcopy to electronic form; moved to Creative-Commons imagery; built and administered the mailing list; managed a small volunteer team.
  • Rutherford Theatre Company (2013). Migrated a proprietary site to Drupal and recreated hardcopy forms as printable electronic ones.
  • Broadway Bound (2015–2016). Rebuilt a performing-arts studio's site around its three pillars (dance, music, theatre) with a course-registration commerce layer.
Lincoln School PTA Rutherford Theatre Co. Broadway Bound Creative Commons
Module 05.3

05.3Facilitation & Stewardship

The human touch as the terminal optimization layer: standing in front of a room and navigating its dynamics in real time. Facilitating sensitive sessions inside a rigid corporate structure, judging the rhetoric of students, and continuing to study the craft of the written word: the through-line is the careful calibration of a message to the people receiving it.

  • JPMorganChase (STO, 2003–2006). Facilitated two courses on diversity in the workplace and within the customer base: managing human dynamics in a highly structured environment.
  • Academic Decathlon, NJ (2018–2020). Judge for Speech and Essay at the regional and state levels, evaluating rhetorical effectiveness and structural integrity.
  • Writers Studio, NY (2008). Fiction and Poetry (Level 1): keeping the writing instrument tuned.
JPMC Diversity Academic Decathlon Writers Studio Facilitation