Magazine Spring 2024 Exit Stage Right
PAUL DELANEY never forgot attending a live performance of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” as a high school student. During his 52-year career as a Westmont English professor, he has taken students to plays in Santa Barbara, Southern California, England and Ireland. He led 25 off-campus programs, including England Semester and London Theatre Mayterm, introducing hundreds of students to the best of theater. Although he retires from teaching this spring, he plans to continue traveling to London to take in the latest productions.
Paul delights in giving students the chance to experience “uproarious Shakespearean comedy, moving Shakespearean tragedy, modern classics in stellar productions, interesting premieres, experimental theatre in small venues, and the occasional blockbuster musical.” Even students in his classes on campus can expect a trip to the theater. “I get to see wonderful plays with wonderful students,” he says. “I always learn something from their play reviews. It’s a delight to go to the theater with 44 eyes.”
His scholarship includes two books about Tom Stoppard, the celebrated British playwright: “Tom Stoppard in Conversation” (University of Michigan Press, 1994); and “Tom Stoppard: The Moral Vision of the Major Plays” (Macmillan Press; St. Martin’s Press, 1990). Paul has also published “Brian Friel in Conversation” (University of Michigan Press, 2000) about the Irish playwright. His areas of expertise extend to contemporary drama, 20th-century Irish literature, Shakespeare in performance, and Faulkner. Paul received Westmont’s Faculty Research Award in 1992 and was Teacher of the Year in 2015.
In 1973, Paul saw his first Stoppard play, “Jumpers,” and the main character’s belief in God impressed him. “Stoppard believes in moral absolutes and in a divine source for those absolutes,” he says. “Such dazzling stagecraft and such adroit word play! Some of his plays feel like a confection that sparkles and also has a moral center to it. That thrills me.”
Paul also enjoys teaching a class on American writer William Faulkner. “I forbid students to read any plot summaries, criticisms or information about his books,” Paul says. “They need the experience of figuring out Faulkner for themselves. Students can create timelines and family trees to piece things together and understand the complications in relationships.” In Paul’s first-year honors English seminars, he asks students to analyze Faulkner and compare him with another author.
Another text he assigns, “Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature” by Erich Auerbach, shows the radical difference between Greco-Roman and Judeo-Christian literature. “Auerbach explains what is so distinctive about biblical narratives and their influence on the way stories are told in Western literature,” Paul says. “He takes the story of Abraham and Isaac from the Old Testament and a passage from Homer and contrasts Hebraic with Hellenistic forms of narrative. He also compares the story of Peter’s denial from the New Testament with a passage from Petronius, a Roman writer.”
After reconnecting with a childhood friend at his 50th high school reunion, Paul married her in 2021. A biology major in college, Pat worked as a lab technician and then taught kindergarten before retiring. She did graduate work in philosophy and stays involved with the John Cobb Institute in Claremont. She happily joined him for his last London Theatre Mayterm in 2022.
Theater professor John Blondell will succeed Paul as the director of this popular summer program. But Paul dreams about a curtain call: a possible two-week reunion tour for former London Theatre Mayterm students. Anyone interested in such a return trip can contact Paul by email at delaney@gzlyms.com.
“It would make a great ending to my Westmont story,” Paul says.