An Actor’s Elegy combines the texts of William Shakespeare’s speech, “All the world’s a stage” from As You Like It and Sara Teasdale’s poem Alchemy. This composition is dedicated to Tom Beckett, my theater teacher during my middle school years, who passed away in the spring of 2020. His kindness, warmth, and passion for his art is a significant part of my inspiration to become a teacher, and he is deeply beloved, sorely missed, and fondly remembered by his family, friends, and students.

The SATB choir repeats phrases from Shakespeare’s speech, which Beckett once selected as a phrase that he might use to summarize his life for one of our class assignments. This text is used to represent the effect of his passing on the world that surrounded him, the theatrical, artistic, and academic communities of Portland, Oregon, and the wider world that his students have gone on to influence. The Teasdale text, in contrast, serves as a personal reflection on the weight of his passing to the individual that knew him, and how one might take that grief, and in allowing themselves to experience it fully, may transform pain into “living gold”. This concept of living gold, to me, represents the healing through the creation of art that feeds the bright memories of the departed, rather than focusing on their loss. However, I invite anyone experiencing loss to whom that phrase speaks differently to hold their own interpretations in their hearts, as it is only in one’s personal truth that their art may shine its brightest.