“That you are here – that life exists, and identity;
That the powerful play goes on, and you will contribute a verse.” – Walt Whitman

By Barry McNamara

Nearly a quarter-century ago, Jeff Day enrolled at Monmouth College. After just a year, he left, and his time on campus looked like it would barely amount to a footnote, much less “a verse.”

“I was ill-prepared for the responsibility,” he admitted.

Three years in the U.S. Army serving at Schofield Barracks in Hawaii helped pave the way for his return to Monmouth College in 1989. Although Day said that “squandered opportunities” were still a part of his second try at college, he found a calling in the world of theater, and there’s been little stopping him since.

“If not for Doc (Jim) De Young, I’m not entirely certain where I would be today,” said Day, who is currently just down the road from Monmouth in Macomb, where he recently completed an MFA directing program at Western Illinois University.

“He graciously cast me as Demetrius in his production of Shakespeare’s ‘Midsummer Night’s Dream,’ and that experience served, unbeknownst to me at the time, as the catalyst for my relationship with theater.”

Day used the term “bittersweet” to describe his Monmouth College experiences, and the “sweet” definitely came from his time with theater. As he recently told De Young: “It’s cliché to suggest that someone ‘changed’ another person’s life, but in this case I think it is true. Thank you for the gift you gave. Thank you for helping me to find an outlet that accepts – and even rewards – some of the ‘paths less traveled’ that I’ve found myself on from time to time. I will never forget you or stop being thankful for what you gave me.”

The “sweet” also referred to what it meant to Day to be a college student.

Day (kneeling) performs during his MC student days in the Crimson Masque production "Noises Off."

“I felt so privileged to be at Monmouth, learning alongside accomplished students from such a distinguished faculty. I recall feeling for the first time in my life a sense that I had something to say.”

The “bitter,” he said, was that “I failed to take advantage of the academic opportunities offered to me and, worse, I failed to fully utilize my own gifts and talents in a responsible way … So many doors were open while I attended Monmouth; too frequently I failed to enter them. I wish I had done more to honor the expectations of a faculty that made such a genuine and concerted effort to foster my development not only as a student but as a well-rounded citizen of the world.”

“Jeff’s success today is just another of those little stories that can be told to back up the strange ways in which a Monmouth liberal arts education can finally take hold,” said De Young. “Jeff was a lot of things, but prime example of an exemplary student was not one of them. But here he is now on a track that would have been hard to imagine on the day of his graduation.”

That track will take Day to Lubbock, Texas, in early August to start work on his Ph.D. at Texas Tech University.

“I was thrilled to learn that I received a very generous graduate assistantship, plus won one of the department’s annual scholarships,” said Day. “The program is unique in that it does not set up an opposition between text and performance, theory and practice. That was very important to me – I don’t want to feel that I’m studying theater in a petri dish. It combines a practical and academic course of study in which we function as both theater practitioners and scholars.”

Doctoral candidates have to choose two tracks in which to specialize, and Day will study “Theory/History/Criticism” as one of his tracks and “Arts Administration” as the other.

“I anticipate taking between four and five years to complete the degree,” said Day. Eventually, he hopes to “either start my own theater company and put to test the various ideas and theories I’ve been studying or find a small liberal arts college and share what I’ve learned with the next generation of theater students.”

Future students attending one of his classes might hear something like this as Day’s initial lecture: “I do believe that it is wholly necessary for an artist to have a relationship with his or her craft. Our craft feeds and thrives on passion, is nurtured by constant and thoughtful reflection, basks in our active attention, and ultimately is prohibited from yielding anything more substantial than we have dutifully invested.” 

Those investments have been adding up for Day since his role as Demetrius. As a Monmouth student, that includes the production of a play he wrote, titled “Sitting Bull.”

“It was remarkable primarily only in its deficiencies,” he recalled. “Worse, I made the grievous error of attempting to direct my own work, an experiment that isn’t frequently advised and I can say now I understand why.”

He was working with many performers who did not have much stage experience, but he credits the process for making him more aware of the fact that some actors simply need an opportunity.

“It is not lost on me, when I look back over the various casting decisions I’ve made while working on my MFA, that I have frequently cast the unknown actor, the actor who simply needed a chance,” he said. “Perhaps in some way I have been subconsciously attempting to duplicate what Doc De Young did for me – to recruit fellow lost souls into this wonderful community of theater where oftentimes the wounds and shortcomings that were our savage albatross suddenly become eager kindling that spur creative expression and, subsequently, a long-desired actualization.”

Following graduation from Monmouth in 1994, Day moved to California and eventually enrolled in a theater conservatory that he credits for teaching him several skills, including those of a stage manager. In 1999, he helped co-found the Shady Shakespeare Theatre Company (www.shadyshakes.org). He has also directed an original script at the Edinburgh International Fringe Festival and, in 2003, he began working for the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching as it opened a new facility overlooking Stanford University.

“My time at the Carnegie Foundation served as the primary impetus for seeking first my MFA degree, and now the Ph.D.,” he explained. 

Day also found the time to pursue other interests and is a self-described “avid rock climber … I fell in love with California’s great natural wilderness and as a result developed a love of camping, hiking, deep country backpacking, cycling, etc.”

Day has spent part of the summer biking the back roads of western Illinois, and he found himself back on the Monmouth campus not too long ago.

“I was struck by the power of my emotions as I walked the campus,” said Day. “I squandered so much opportunity, yet still walked away with such an abundance of possibility. I was pretty lost and out of control back then, but over time I’ve finally found ways to connect with the world and to be more involved with it.”

When asked to summarize what Monmouth College has meant to his life, Day responded, “In a word, opportunity – the opportunity to learn, explore, participate, question, discover, grow, unite, progress, and ultimately, the opportunity to succeed.”

And the opportunity to, as Whitman says, “contribute a verse” to the powerful play called life.