Elizabeth DeMeo, Fulbright ETA Grant, 2013–2014

“’Really, Elise? Headphones?’

We’re practicing for Romeo and Juliet. My cast of 12 students has a tall order before them: learn lines that are not only in English, but arcane Shakespearean dialect. Normally, they’re up to the task, giving their free time after school and on weekends to work their way through the adaptation we’ve created, set in a bustling Malaysian night market. But today Elise is wearing headphones, absorbed in her own world as I try to start rehearsal. I open my mouth to chastise her, but before I can begin she cuts me off:

‘Miss, it’s not music. Listen.’

She hands me her headphones. Elise, as it turns out, has recorded herself at home, reading all her lines.

Four weeks later, she will make an incredible Juliet, standing brave before all her peers in a school-wide performance. Three months later, she will transform into Persephone in Orpheus and Eurydice, and two months after that she will become Goneril in our version of King Lear, set in a Malaysian palm oil plantation. Throughout the year, she will run a social entrepreneurship project, participate in a Girl Power camp, paint murals, come to my house for yoga, and on my last night in Maran, Malaysia, she will take me to dinner, presenting me with a book of photos and memories she and her classmates have made.

The most valuable thing I learned in Malaysia? If I can be half the woman Elise is, I’ll be proud.”

Click here for Elizabeth’s blog!