Actress, director, and on-camera coach Nancy Reardon, 81, has worked with St. Ann’s students for the past 50 years, engaging them in character development and strengthening their self-confidence for polished stage performances through theater classes and Shakespeare workshops. This spring, the “queen” of Saint Ann’s stepped down from her throne.
“They called it a coronation, not a retirement, as they crowned me Queen Elizabeth I,” said Reardon, recounting Saint Ann’s 36th Annual Puppet Parade where students made a 10-foot-tall costumed puppet in her image, complete with pearls, tulle, fiery red yarn hair, and Lego character earrings that she wore every day to work.
In addition to their own creations, students carried handmade, larger-than-life-sized puppets through the streets of Brooklyn Heights. “I felt so loved; I couldn’t imagine anyone doing anything like that,” Reardon said. “It was the most amazing day of my life.”
Reardon studied at Syracuse University, Hunter College, Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts London and Exeter College, Oxford, and appeared at Shakespeare in the Park and in multiple off-Broadway and Broadway shows including “Poor Bitos” (1964), “Agamemnon” (1968), and “Fame” (1974). She was also seen on TV as the Irish Spring Soap girl and as Kathleen Ryan Thompson on the Irish daytime drama “Ryan’s Hope” between 1976 and 1980.
Introduced to Bosworth in 1973
Though Reardon never took an education course, she did have some experience teaching children in the early 1970s while working full time, both through the Board of Education in New York while she was on Broadway as well as on the weekends while directing at the Tyrone Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis, MN. However, it was during the spring of 1973 when she was introduced to Stanley Bosworth, the founding headmaster of St. Ann’s. Reardon was hired as a substitute teacher and joined the faculty the following year as theater director, setting her course for the next 49 years.
“So why did I go back day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, decade after decade? Because of the community—from the wonderful teachers and students to the kitchen and security staff,” Reardon said.
Reardon has left an impact.
“Nancy is wildly original, fearless, and unpretentiously erudite, encouraging people of all ages to think and behave according to their own individual instincts [and] to discover the art within and around them,” said Jane Avrich, English teacher and close friend who has known Reardon since 1990 when she joined the school’s faculty. Avrich was also taught by Reardon. “I remember Nancy teaching me to perform ‘My Mistress’ Eyes are Nothing Like the Sun’, which is one of my favorites, when I was in the‘Love Lane Players’ with a handful of Nancy’s other adult students. She pointed out the shadings of meaning in each word, making me think of the connotations of ‘coral,’ ‘wires,’ ‘damask,’ ‘reeks,’ and ‘ground,’ each of which is crisp, hearty and earthbound. I came to understand the poem in a completely different way.”
Ruby Westhoff, a 2019 graduate, remembered how intimidated she was by the script of Macbeth at 16, given its serious tone and often older adult character portrayals. “I rehearsed as best I could, but I knew my disconnection from the scene would never get past Nancy,” she said, recalling the play’s pivotal Act 1, Scene 7. “She asked us to scrap everything and instead imagine we were teenagers at a house party trying to keep our voices down. It was notes like these that fundamentally shaped my love for the theater. Nancy made Shakespeare feel as accessible as a scandalous teen show on Netflix. She never expected us to be anything other than ourselves, and she let us find performances from our own understanding of the scene.”
“Nancy was never teaching us to be actors; she was teaching us to be artists … she makes theater for the audience,” Westhoff added. “There was never an ounce of selfishness in Nancy’s work, and we all learned to behave the same way because ego was not allowed in Nancy’s room. This is what made Nancy’s plays so fun. … Nancy is, without a doubt, the greatest teacher I will ever have.”
Though she says she’ll miss the conviviality, Reardon says she’s excited for her next act in life. “I’ll still keep doing theater, obviously, but there’s so many things that I haven’t tried because I’ve been so focused on teaching,” said Reardon from her home in Cape Cod, MA, on June 19, five days after officially retiring. “It’s like being in a candy store; I can pick and choose. I could maybe write or work with animals. I don’t know what I’m going to be doing.”
She added, “And it may be scary, but starting anything new is scary. Isn’t that true?”
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