Entering a New Era of Multimedia - Lehman College

Catching Up with Retired Faculty
Writing Doesn’t Stop in Retirement
for Professor Albert Bermel
Life is good for Professor Emeritus
Albert Bermel.
He and his wife, Joyce, live in New Rochelle where they raised
their sons Neil, now a professor of Russian and Slavonic studies
at the University of Sheffield, and Derek, a clarinetist, composer,
and rising star in the music world.
Old friends stay in touch—like the former CUNY Graduate Center
student who sent a press clipping from Chicago’s Daily Variety
Gotham of an interview with the Australian actor Geoffrey Rush.
Asked to name three books that meant a lot to him, Rush replied:
The Act of Creation by Arthur Koestler, The Collected Works of
William Shakespeare, and Farce by Albert Bermel.
These days Bermel is finishing up a memoir of his childhood as an
evacuee in England during World War II, a musical version of Moliere’s
The Miser, and Give & Grab, a tragicomedy about prejudice,
set in contemporary midlands, England. “One powerhouse woman
takes on an entire village in a struggle to halt the persecution of
gypsies,” he said. “By extension, it’s about the way people anywhere
respond when ‘the norm’ comes face to face with ‘the other’.”
When Professor Bermel joined Lehman’s Speech and Theatre
Department in 1970, he was already well known as a theater
critic for the New Leader and a published playwright, author,
and translator of classical works for the modern theater.
“The undergrads at Lehman had lots of other responsibilities—
jobs, family obligations, sometimes contributing income to their
children and parents,” he said. “I tried to work with them, as one
of them, not over them in an authoritarian manner.”
His classes emphasized close readings of plays, and they attended
live performances together. Students learned to carefully observe
the lighting, stage design, movement, costumes—and to write about
what they saw. In class discussions, Professor Bermel encouraged
them to question and challenge the “experts.”
An example that stays with him to this day involved George
Bernard Shaw’s play Mrs. Warren’s Profession, about the relationship
between a prostitute and her daughter. “In that play, the
identity of the young girl’s father is never revealed. My observation
was that it was a character with the peculiar name of Praed, but I
had no proof,” he said. “One of my students, Sarah Velez, pointed
out that Praed was an exact anagram for the Spanish word padre—
father. Brilliant!”
14 Lehman Today/Spring 2010
Professor Bermel’s teaching philosophy is that every student has
the ability to think creatively and independently. His advice: “Be
wide open. Don’t go into any experience with opinions held fast.
Accept at first what teachers tell you, but think it over. See if you
agree. Is it an opinion? Is it true? What good is it for me to know
that? If things seem unprovable, challenge them. Don’t be afraid of
the value of your own opinions and thoughts.”
Professor Bermel’s path to Lehman was unique. He attended the
London School of Economics, where he earned a degree in economics
and geography and performed in plays and musicals with a
collaborative troupe whose members went on to fame and fortune.
“We used improv as a way of expounding our views about artistic
madness and similar subjects,” he explained. “The give-and-take
between performers and audience—and the need to improvise on
the spot—resembled conditions in a classroom. It required a ‘go
with the flow’ approach that I brought with me as a teacher.”
After graduating, he took a job in London in advertising. He came
to New York to “visit” and stayed to work as editor. During this time,
the Royal Court Theater in London produced his first original play,
One Leg Over the Wrong Wall, about Charlemagne.
His work at the New Leader caught the eye of Columbia University’s
Bernard Beckermann, who was creating a visionary new graduate
theatre department. Professor Bermel taught at Columbia—until
the department was dismantled in a budget crisis. Meanwhile, there
was an opening in Speech and Theatre at Lehman, and he found a
new academic home until he retired in 2000. Columbia’s loss was
Lehman’s gain.