ONLY FAJER CAN BALANCE THE BARD AND THE BAR

Man of Many Roles

ll the world’s a stage.... And one man in his time plays many parts,” Shakespeare once wrote. Juggling the “parts” of law professor, theatre director, and gay rights advocate, Marc Fajer has taken those words to heart.

Born in Boston and raised in New York, Fajer recalls always being a creative spirit, and although both his parents were scientists, “they always taught us that it was OK to be silly,” he remembers. So while attending Stanford University, Fajer caught the theatre bug, scoring his first college role as Second Outlaw in a production of Shakespeare’s Two Gentleman from Verona. It was his passion for language, however, that led him to pursue law. “In both theatre and law,” he explains, “there is a precision in language, as well as a need to be able to convey a story in a way people will understand.”

Trading the bard for the bar, in 1988 Fajer began teaching at the University of Miami’s School of Law. Students, however, wouldn’t be his only audience.

Fajer directed his first play at the University—Side by Side by Sondheim—in 1990, enlisting the talents of law students and faculty, which, says Fajer, allows them “to see each other in a different way.” Fajer continued to direct, everything from Shakespeare’s Macbeth and the African-American female experience of For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf in School of Law classrooms to his most recent feat, Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida in New York City. Using a stage dressed as a vacant lot and PVC pipe for swords, “I discovered what off-off-Broadway meant pretty quickly,” Fajer jokes.

“Marc is so dedicated to the cause; he can get you to do what he wants without ever stepping on your toes,” says School of Law staff associate Hazel Nicholson, who has worked on three of Fajer’s plays. “He also manages to keep people who have worked on his plays together, even after they’ve left; he’ll invite everyone to his house for a play reading, things like that.”

Also close to his heart is the issue of gay rights. Penning a journal article on gay and lesbian stereotyping and legal rights—“Can Two Men Eat Quiche Together?”—Fajer has always made a point to be open with his students. “All I want to be able to do is have the same conversations in public as any other person and not have it be an issue,” says Fajer, “and the best way I can contribute to the cause is by being out all the time.” His number-one cause as a professor, however, is connecting with his students.

“There’s a woman in one of my classes who, whenever she grasped a concept, she would blurt out, ‘Oh!,’” recalls Fajer, who last year received the Faculty Senate’s Outstanding Teaching Award. “I think it was involuntary, but it’s incredibly satisfying for me. I wish everyone had little light bulbs that flashed over their heads when they got something.”

For Fajer, after all, it’s not about his professorial performance. “For an actor, it’s all about you,” he explains. “Teaching is more like directing. At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter whether or not you gave a good performance, but rather that your audience got it.”

– Jessica Sick, B.S.C. ’00