Obsessed With Orson

Every January, the high school where I teach has what we call J-Term. A lot of colleges have these, but very few high schools. Our J-Term is a two-week period where teachers are able to teach (and students are able to take) classes that break out of the 'norm' of a traditional class during the school year. My colleagues have been drawn to classes both within and outside of their designated content areas - teaching classes on the Beatles, opera, presidential assassinations, and a wide variety of authors ranging from Hans Christian Andersen to Edgar Allen Poe, from Robert Louis Stevenson to Agatha Christie. Some of them have taught the same class for years, fine-tuning it into a well-oiled machine; others have never taught the same class twice, picking up new information to add to their educational repertoire.

As for myself, I have taught three J-Terms at this point, none of them really in my content area, but based on interests of my own. I've taught an acting class (which, I learned the hard way, cannot be done in two weeks - thankfully, they've let me expand it out to a one semester class), a comic book class (focusing on both the literature and history of the graphic medium), and a class on world mythology (not merely being content to focus on Greco-Roman or Norse mythology). Obviously, I tend to fall into the 'no-repeats' camp.

This year, I've decided to teach a class on the life and art of Orson Welles, simply called "The Art of Welles." (I happened to think this title a clever play on Sun Tzu's "The Art of War," but I'm not anticipating many kids being able to 'get' that.) Here's the course description I had to type up: "In the history of American entertainment, few names stand as tall or as proud as Orson Welles. A visionary talent and self-proclaimed genius, Welles mastered the worlds of theater, radio, television, and film over the course of his fifty-year career. This class will discuss the oeuvre of Welles, paying special attention to his triumphs (Citizen Kane, Touch of Evil, The Third Man), his failures (including unfinished productions of Don Quixote and The Other Side of the Wind), and his controversies (like those surrounding Citizen Kane and his immortal 'War of the Worlds' broadcast), noting how these play a role in the life of the artist."

Since I lit upon the prospect of this class, I've been excitedly hunting for Welles biographies, trying to learn as much as possible about this fascinating figure. I've gathered two biographies that are relatively short and sweet (one, written by Ben Walters for the British "Life & Times" series, covers the first 35 years of his life in a scant 90 pages, while the other, written by F.X. Feeney for Taschen Publishing, is mainly a lot of pictures with captions in three languages), so I'm looking for something with a bit more substance. I'm thinking about This is Orson Welles by Peter Bogdanovich for the class text. Anyone have any recommendations for some supplementary material?

Welles is a truly fascinating figure to me, a very ironic and vivid picture of art imitating life. From wunderkind to pariah in only a few short years, his own rise and fall closely mirrors those of the characters he was so fond of playing - from the classics of Shakespeare, like Macbeth or King Lear, to the characters he created himself, like Charles Foster Kane or Gregory Arkadin. His greatest downfall, like these great characters themselves, was his own ego, his own self-conceived genius, fed into by hubris. True, he was a brilliant artist... but what are the limits of the artist? What is his overall role? When does he need to take control and when does he need to step back?

I, for one, truly look forward to asking and answering these questions between now and January. I also look forward to immersing myself in Welles' films and radio plays - a lot of which I have yet to experience. Mostly, I look forward to showing these things to students who may never have experienced them before! It's going to be a lot of fun... and I just can't wait to get started!