We began our “What It Took” series last fall to share stories from �ֲ���ý people about how they’ve learned to become resilient in tough times, with a focus on the skills and strategies that help them double down when the road gets rough.

What we didn’t know at the time is that how we tell stories of our life — how we narrate our experiences — goes a long way toward achieving resilience and psychological well-being.

Now we do, thanks to Jonathan Adler ’00, a clinical psychologist and professor of psychology at Olin College of Engineering and a senior lecturer at Harvard Medical School.

Storytelling is one of the oldest art forms, as well as an important tool that helps us make informed decisions and navigate the path ahead. 

Adler has conducted research on narrative identity, which is the idea that the stories we weave together about our reconstructed past, perceived present, and imagined future help us make meaning out of the things that happen to us. Adler recently shared his research with host Shankar Vedantam on the popular NPR show Hidden Brain where he explained how research shows that whether we look back at past events plays a critical role in our mental health. 

looked at 600 narratives from about 50 adults who came to a psychotherapy clinic for a wide range of issues, from depression, anxiety, and eating disorders to a simple desire to improve friendships and relationships. Adler and his colleagues measured the clients’ psychological well-being using standard indicators both before therapy and after each session — then they looked at the stories the clients told.

“What was really cool is that using statistical modeling techniques we found that the stories actually changed before people’s psychological well-being changed. It was as though people were narrating a new version of their lives, and then a week or two later, their well-being would sort of catch up with the new story,” Adler said. 

When Adler learned about this �ֲ���ýNews series, he wanted to help — but he encouraged us to seek out stories that don’t necessarily have a happy ending, that don’t end with a feeling of redemption. Those types of stories are powerful, too, Adler said, and they offer another narrative option for those suffering through difficult times.

“It’s a pretty profound thing to say, ‘I’ve come out the other side of this challenging thing, and it didn’t make me happy, but it did help me understand some things about my life and my values.’ That in and of itself is a worthwhile outcome,” Adler said. “I think stories that demonstrate the importance of searching for meaning push back against what I call the ‘press for redemption’ in our culture.”

As an example, he points to a study he helped conduct involving the parents of neurodivergent children on the autism spectrum and parents of non-neurodivergent children. 

One woman who stood out was the mother of a child with severe autism spectrum disorder. Her child required a lot of care and attention, yet when she talked about caring for this child, she told a story of a love that made her learn more about herself. Adler said these lessons are valuable.

“Meaningfulness and happiness are separate qualities we search for in life and both are important.”

Jonathan Adler ’00

“She would not say, ‘Having this child with severe autism spectrum disorder was a gift.’ That’s a socially appropriate story. And some people genuinely do feel like that, and that’s great. But that’s not the only option,” he explained.

“I think she would say, ‘This has been really hard. I don’t know that I would’ve asked for this challenge, but because I have had this challenge, I have learned things about myself that I might not otherwise have.’ And there’s a positivity to that. But it’s not necessarily redemptive. Meaningfulness and happiness are separate qualities we search for in life and both are important.” 

A decade ago, Adler began working with the nonprofit , which helps patients with all kinds of illnesses share stories of struggle. The organization hosts “Healing Story Sessions,” where patients (and sometimes medical providers) share their stories. These events are sometimes performed in small private living rooms, sometimes in large auditoriums. One that is held annually at Massachusetts General Hospital draws several hundred. But whatever the size of the crowd, Adler called them “transportive and therapeutic” for both the storytellers and the audience.

Like the story of the mother above, these sessions support the idea that our life stories are not always redemptive. “When we’re working with people who have terminal illnesses, they sometimes say, ‘Happiness is not an option for me. That’s not the goal. I need to make sense of what this is all about.’ And that is valuable in and of itself,” Adler said. 

When Adler attended �ֲ���ý from 1996 to 2000, he obviously didn’t know he would go on to do important research in a new field, but he knew he was passionate about both his psychology major and his interest in theater, directing three plays with the Robinson Players. Today he uses both disciplines in his work.

Twice a year at Olin, he leads a story slam where students, faculty, and staff tell short stories about their lives. He takes engineering and business students who have no experience in theater and helps them deliver thrilling performances. He also leads story slams at other colleges, such as Wellesley College, and has led them for major organizations. Adler also has become a playwright. (co-authored with Jim Petosa) premiered Off-Broadway in July of 2022.

An important element of the stories we tell is what psychologists call the “chapter breaks,” the moments in time where we draw the connection between the good and bad times, because if we see things as transitioning from good to troubling times, we can get stuck in that contaminative mindset.

Adler found this to be true in his own life story, which he shared a piece of on the Hidden Brain episode .” Adler explained to host Shankar Vedantam how, as a young gay man in the 1990s who had not yet come out, he spent his semester abroad in Australia hoping to learn more about himself in a new environment. But he just ended up lonely. 

After he returned from Australia, Adler threw himself into his studies. He graduated as one of the top students in his class and took a research job at Harvard University. He then applied to 10 graduate schools — but only got into one.

“At the time, it felt like a shock. I imagined that I might have more choices when approaching this next big chapter of my life,” Adler said on Hidden Brain. “If you draw the end of a chapter break with me coming back from Australia, it looks like good turned bad, it looks like contamination. But if you expand the chapter until I’m already ensconced in graduate school, then it looks like redemption.” 

As it turned out, the one school Adler got into — Northwestern University — was the research base of Dan McAdams, a pioneering scientist in the study of narrative identity, who became Adler’s mentor and, eventually, his scientific collaborator. Chicago also was where Adler met his future husband. 

“I look back at this turning point in my life with a profound sense of, first of all, gratitude, but also redemption,” Adler said on Hidden Brain. “What at the time felt like close to failure — that all my work in college, and all my ignoring of my personal life for the sake of my intellectual life had presented me with only one option — now feels like the universe trying to make sure I found my way. Within a year, I was having a more gratifying intellectual experience than I ever imagined, and I was in love.”

Now with his son and daughter — ages 8 and 10 — Adler is trying to be mindful of helping them narrate healthy stories, as he and his husband, Jonathan Lewis, raise them.

“I’m really thoughtful when I’m helping our kids recount their day to think about both the event and the feelings of the day. I want them to have as broad a sort of narrative toolbox as possible when they become narrators of their own lives,” Adler said.

Theater students call her “the queen.”

The royal in question is Katalin Vecsey, senior lecturer in theater, and because she’s the queen, she naturally has a framed oil portrait of herself looking very queenly hanging in her second-floor office above Schaeffer Theatre.

Painted by Singha Hon ’14, a double major in theater and art and visual culture, the portrait was a surprise birthday gift from the Robinson Players, the student theater troupe that Vecsey advises, which threw in a second present: a sign that reads, “It ain’t easy being queen.”

Vecsey, who is also the vocal director for �ֲ���ý theatrical productions, stashed the painting at home but a friend recently suggested that she frame it and hang it in her office for others to enjoy. That made practical sense. But another sense — modesty — prompted Vecsey to place the artwork behind her office door “so it’s not so obvious to everyone who comes in that I think of myself as a queen.”

The painting includes a fur stole — “I don’t wear fur, but I guess a queen has to” — and a signature Vecsey necklace made of surgical steel, representative of her taste in “crazy” jewelry.

“Every time I look at it, I smile and think of how much I enjoy the work that I do with the Robinson Players,” Vecsey says, noting Hon’s artistic skill to make sure that “the crown doesn’t look like it came from Burger King.”

The admiration is mutual. The acknowledgments in a Robinson Players’ program always include “a very special thanks to Kati Vecsey, our unbelievably dedicated faculty adviser for her unending commitment.”

Each year, the Robinson Players votes in a faculty adviser, and each year the organization’s board of directors and members choose Vecsey. At some point, she says, they changed the ballot to read “Queen of the Robinson Players.” Like any good monarch, Vecsey figures that “I’m going to die out instead of passing it to somebody else.”

Why do they call her the Queen? Perhaps because she sounds the part, with a distinctive Hungarian accent that, thanks to old Hollywood films, tells us she should belong to the aristocracy.

Vecsey’s is a benevolent, yet activist monarchy. She advises the troupe on its play choices, and they turn to her for advice during dress rehearsals. “It’s a very honorable position. The students trust me with my criticism, with my reviews of the play,” she says. “People feel very vulnerable showing their art, and I feel very privileged that they choose me every year to be that special person who provides critical feedback.”

In the end, Vecsey’s portrait occupies very little real estate in the curio shop that is her office, which is filled with books, papers, and objects from years of theater, scholarship, and teaching.

But with a collector’s passion, she concludes, “I come into my office, I look at lots of stuff that I’ve done, and it makes me feel good.” What more could a queen ask for?

�ֲ���ý dancers rehearse for a October 2014 performance. (Sarah Crosby/�ֲ���ý College)

Dancers, actors, musicians and improv comics offer a late afternoon smorgasbord of performing arts in the annual �ֲ���ý Arts in Action concert at 5 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 25, in �ֲ���ý College’s Schaeffer Theatre, 329 College St.

Coordinated by the Robinson Players, �ֲ���ý’s student-run theater organization, with help from other student clubs and from Hannah Miller ’14, formerly a stage manager for �ֲ���ý dance, the event is open to the public at no cost. For more information, please call 207-786-6161.

Performers include the Robinson Players; members of the Dynasty Step Team and the �ֲ���ý Dance Club; the Crosstones and TakeNote a cappella singers; and Strange Bedfellows, an improv comedy troupe.

The performance “is an opportunity for the broader community to hang out in a relaxed environment and witness a large variety of art performed by students,” says Miller, now an academic administrative assistant at �ֲ���ý.

Cast members in the Robinson Players' production of "The Laramie Project": Alanna Hoffman '15 as the Narrator; Nick Auer '15 as Jon Peacock, Matthew Shepard's academic advisor; Jonathan Schwolsky '15 as Tectonic Theater Project member Andy Paris.

Seeking to spark constructive dialogue on campus and in the community, a student theater group at �ֲ���ý College presents Moisés Kaufman’s The Laramie Project in performances at 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday, Feb. 10-11, and at 2 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 12. All shows are in Gannett Theater, Pettigrew Hall, 305 College St.

Tickets are $5 and available at the door. Proceeds go to Outright L/A, a Lewiston-Auburn organization that supports LGBTQ youth in a safe and affirming environment. For more information, please contact mschloss@bates.edu.

A 4 p.m. panel discussion follows the Sunday performance in Gannett Theater. Featured are members of the production; Heather Lindkvist, director of the Diversity in Excellence Leadership Team at �ֲ���ý; and members of OUTfront, an LGBTQ advocacy group on campus. Refreshments will be served.

Time magazine described as “a pioneering work and a powerful stage event.” The play captures the voices of residents of Laramie, Wyo., following the brutal 1998 murder of Matthew Shepard, a University of Wyoming student who was gay.

Immediately following the murder, members of the New York City-based Tectonic Theater Project traveled to Laramie, seeking “the story of the people of Laramie in their own words,” as the troupe’s website states.

Led by Tectonic artistic director Kaufman, they returned repeatedly over the next two years to collect interviews. The result is a script comprising 40 haunting and authentic narratives structured as a series of “moments” supported by monologues.

The play, produced by the Robinson Players, is co-directed by senior Michelle Schloss of Unionville, Conn.; and junior Spencer Collet of Leawood, Kan. Schloss and Collet’s theatrical strengths complement each other: The former is a seasoned director while the latter has a strong acting background. Accordingly, Schloss focuses on mapping character movement, and Collet on developing the monologues.

“The play doesn’t make any argument at all,” Schloss explains. “It focuses on the community and asks: Why did this happen here? It shows all the different viewpoints and lets those sink in.”

Collet adds, “You get all of these very intense issues presented at once in a way that’s compelling because they come from real people. If it does anything, The Laramie Project celebrates our differences no matter what they are. We are not making any definitive judgment — apart from, hate is wrong. ”

Fairly and effectively dramatizing these differences has tested the Robinson Players. Collet explains, “The biggest challenge is to present it so that people don’t come away saying, ‘Those people there must be terrible.’ All groups portrayed in this show are given an equal say.”

“Every opinion, whether or not people here agree with it, is valid and real,” Schloss agrees.

Departing from a decade-plus of annual Robinson productions of The Vagina Monologues, Laramie engages contemporary discourse on gender and sexuality. Collet, who performed in the play in high school and suggested it to the �ֲ���ý company, intended it to be a catalyst for student and community dialogue.

Accordingly, the company has teamed up with OUTfront to develop the post-show panel. OUTfront also suggested Outright L/A as the organization to receive the proceeds.

Schloss and Collet praise the 14 actors for their maturity and focus in playing characters who are unlike them and for tackling the challenge of playing 40 characters. “Every single member of this cast is phenomenal, and I’ve never been in a theater situation where you have that,” states Collet.

Among the players are:

Nick Auer, a first-year from Fairfield, Conn., who portrays Aaron McKinney, one of Shepard’s assailants;

Charles Emple, a senior from Swampscott, Mass., who plays a member of the Tectonic Theater Project, as well as Aaron Kriefels, who found Shepard and placed the 911 call;

Jennifer Flanagan, a senior from Sherborn, Mass., playing an administrative assistant at the university;

MacKenzie Pendergast, a first-year student from Greenwich, Conn., who plays Reggie Fluty, the policewoman who responded to Kriefels’ 911 call;

Liam Zaaijer, a senior from South Orange, N.J., who portrays a limousine driver in Laramie and also Father Roger Schmidt, the minister who held the first candlelight vigil for Shepard.

Travis Jones, a junior from Ithaca, N.Y., is responsible for the set design, and senior Ian Dulin of Bennington, Vt., created the lighting design.

Since its premiere in 2000, more than 30 million people around the country have seen Laramie at high schools, colleges, community theaters and professional playhouses.

— By Izzy McKean ’12

For the 11th year, �ֲ���ý students are supporting efforts to reduce domestic violence with a production of Eve Ensler’s The Vagina Monologues, in performances at 7:30 p.m. Friday through Sunday, Feb. 11-13, in Gannett Theater, Pettigrew Hall, 305 College St.

Tickets are $5 and available at the door. Proceeds will go to , an Auburn nonprofit that supports victims of domestic violence. Formerly known as the Abused Women’s Advocacy Project, the organization changed its name to emphasize its gender-neutral mission.

For more information about the production, please contact srooth@bates.edu.

The play is produced by the Robinson Players, a student-run theater group. This year’s show debuts the directing skills of Marketa Ort ’13 of New York City. Ort has done much acting at �ֲ���ý, including the 2010 production of Vagina Monologues and theater department productions of and .

“I’m so happy to have had this experience,” Ort says. Going from acting to directing, she says, has “given me a new outlook on theater.”

Performed every February, the �ֲ���ý production takes place around Valentine’s Day and harmonizes with the national campaign to stop violence against women.

Ensler based The Vagina Monologues on interviews with more than 200 women about their sexuality, their bodies and their stories of violence and sexual abuse. The result is a collection of women’s stories that are personal yet universal, comic and poignant, brazen and mysterious.

The play premiered 15 years ago and has since enlightened, shocked and entertained audiences all over the world. Variety magazine called it “spellbinding, funny, and almost unbearably moving. …Written with a bluntness that is nevertheless intensely lyrical, it is both a work of art and an incisive piece of cultural history, a poem and a polemic, a performance and a balm and benediction.”

Productions have featured such top actors as Glenn Close, Cate Blanchett, Susan Sarandon, Marisa Tomei, Rosie Perez, Lily Tomlin, Kate Winslett, Melanie Griffith and Calista Flockhart.

In 1998, Ensler founded the organization V-Day to parlay the play’s success into an effective force for social and political change.

The �ֲ���ý actresses will also sell chocolate lollipops at the college’s dining Commons to raise funds. Ort notes, “When students donate money to a cause, it makes more �ֲ���ýies want to participate, and I love that about this college community.”

— Kelly Cox ’11

Student-run theater group the Robinson Players presents staged readings of a �ֲ���ý professor’s adaptation of the Nutcracker story at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, May 15, and 2 p.m. Sunday, May 16, in the Black Box Theater, Pettigrew Hall, 305 College St.

The readings are open to the public at no cost. For more information, please call 207-786-8294.

Martin Andrucki, Dana Professor of Theater, adapted his play Marie and the Nutcracker from The Nutcracker and the Mouse King, the short novel by 19th-century author E.T.A. Hoffmann. Michelle Schloss, a sophomore from Farmington, Conn., directs the production.

The basis for the popular ballet The Nutcracker, Hoffmann’s story follows the young girl Marie and her Christmas adventures when her favorite toy nutcracker comes to life. “My adaptation moves away from the emphasis on dream and spectacle in the story and, especially, in the ballet,” says Andrucki, “and it clarifies Marie’s intentions.

“There’s still a lot of playful fantasy, but I’m focused on characterization and dramatic development. It’s a play about a young girl moving toward maturity through what she sees as a family crisis: the marriage of her older sister,” he explains.

“She wants to prevent this and, with the reluctant help of her little brother, cooks up a scheme to sabotage the wedding. Her encounter with Nutcracker and the Mouse King helps her to realize the shabbiness of her plot, and points her in a new direction.”

Andrucki calls the original Hoffman text “a wonderful piece of writing, with vivid characters, very weird psychological twists and turns, and a great sense of the power of the imagination.” He hopes that his play will come to serve as a companion piece to holiday productions of A Christmas Carol.

Schloss was looking for a theatrical project for Short Term, �ֲ���ý’ five-week spring semester, when this directorial opportunity came along. “I couldn’t pass up a chance to work with a new script by professor Andrucki,” she says. And with the play scheduled for a full production in the fall by the Lincoln County Community Theater, “this is a chance for him to hear the script out loud and make final changes.”

“The challenge in directing the staged reading has been stripping down the production,” she notes. “In a text where characters can morph from toys to human-size heroes, enter the stage through a magical clock, and play the parts of both humans and royal mice, it’s difficult to picture staging the story with just stools and music stands on a bare stage.”

But with none of the technical demands of a full-scale production to deal with, the staged-reading format affords Schloss “the rare opportunity to focus on the best part of a play,” she says — “the characters and relationships behind the spectacle, and the way they communicate with each other.”

Michelle Schloss, a sophomore from Farmington, Conn., directs the 10th annual �ֲ���ý College production of Eve Ensler’s “The Vagina Monologues” in performances at 8:30 p.m. Friday, Saturday and Sunday, Feb. 5-7, in Gannett Theater, Pettigrew Hall, 305 College St.

The production is sponsored by the Robinson Players, a student theater group at �ֲ���ý. Admission is $5, with proceeds supporting the Auburn-based Abused Women’s Advocacy Project. Seating is general admission. For more information, please call 207-786-6135.
Ensler based “The Vagina Monologues” on interviews that she conducted with more than 200 women about their sexuality, their bodies and their stories of violence and sexual abuse. The result is a collection of women’s stories that are personal yet universal, comic and poignant, brazen and mysterious.

“The Vagina Monologues is so popular because it acknowledges a body part we rarely speak about,” says Schloss. “The monologues are arranged such that they’re raw and honest in a way that women rarely are about such personal matters, except maybe to our closest friends.

“And that’s the great thing about The Vagina Monologues: Instantly, the audience and the cast become the best of friends, as we’re able to share some extremely personal stories and secrets. This everyday wall of common decency and the social custom to refrain from over-sharing is broken down right when the show begins. That’s incredibly freeing for both the cast and the audience.”

The play premiered 14 years ago and has since enlightened, shocked and entertained audiences all over the world. In 1998, Ensler founded the organization V-Day as a means to parlay the play’s success into an effective force for social and political change. (For more information, see the .)

The first �ֲ���ý production took place in 2001, directed by Ariana Margolis ’02, who directed the piece again the following year.

Ensler’s play has received worldwide acclaim since its Obie-winning premiere. Productions have featured such top actors as Glenn Close, Cate Blanchett, Susan Sarandon, Marisa Tomei, Rosie Perez, Lily Tomlin, Kate Winslett, Melanie Griffith and Calista Flockhart.

Margaret Koerber ’10 tries on one of 80 scarfs for sale draped over chairs in Gannett Theater during the “Scarves and Shawls” Extravaganza, a fundraising hour for the Robinson Players to support the student theater group’s 2009-10 season.