Spring 2010 - Tufts University School of Dental Medicine

To get onto the Drama Team, students
have to audition. But instead of having
them read lines from a script, Radin asks
them to take part in a group improvisational
exercise.
“I’m not looking for experience, not even
talent, whatever that is,” he says. “I’m looking
for people who are willing to risk in a
positive way, who are willing to share their
emotions with the audience, who are willing
to work in an ensemble.
“This is the one place in high school we
tell them it’s OK to express yourself; it’s OK
to be different, to be strange,” he continues.
“We are a team, a family. Feeling that they
are in a safe environment, they could go up
on stage and say and do anything they want,
and they know they have support.”
In what other class could you dump water
on a classmate, scream at the top of your
lungs or cut off all your hair? Luke Sisto,
15, who played the madman Renfield in last
fall’s production of Dracula, was committed
enough to his character and comfortable
enough with his cast mates to let them shave
his head, to better suit the role.
“It’s an enclave where I can escape at the
end of the day,” Sisto says, pointing out,
unnecessarily, how harsh and judgmental
high school can be. “It’s just an eclectic
group of people, completely different from
one another, and yet we get along with each
other, and we learn—for the most part.”
Radin’s other job doesn’t come up much,
unless his pager goes off during rehearsal
and someone pipes up with, “Uh oh, Doc
has to do a root canal!” But even new team
members, like Emilee Nicholas, 14, recognize
that he puts a lot of time and effort—
and money from his own pocket—into the
team, “something that he didn’t have to be
doing,” she says.
“He’s amazing, he really is,” she says.
“Every student, he wants to know what’s
going on in their life; he likes to know how
their grades are; he wants to know who these
people are.”
Theater, Radin says, becomes a way for
students to connect with school and succeed.
For some students, the Drama Team
is a game changer. About 15 years ago,
Radin had a student who abused drugs and
alcohol, so much so that at the beginning of
his senior year, he broke into Radin’s dental
office and stole a tank of nitrous oxide.
(He was so intoxicated at the time, Radin
recalls wryly, that he didn’t notice the trail
of blue paint he left on the sidewalk as he
dragged the tank to his home, where police
apprehended him.)
The student faced five years in jail, but
the judge asked Radin what he thought
should happen. “I said, ‘Well, I want my
nitrous oxide back,’ ” Radin says, “ ‘and I
want to see him come back to the Drama
Team and prove he can stay sober until he
graduates.’ ”
He did, and even turned in a memorable
performance as Mercutio in Romeo and
Juliet. “It really turned him around,” Radin
says, speaking about the magic of theater as
if there actually is a supernatural force helping
things along.
Radin has been doing theater of some sort
for 50 years now, from the marionette
troupe that he started with his family when
he was in high school to starring in the
romantic comedy Same Time, Next Year.
“The only years I was not in theater,”
he says, “were the four years that I was at
Tufts.” But he relishes those years of dental
school. After attending the large University
of Massachusetts as an undergraduate, “at
Tufts, it was like one big family,” Radin says.
“I really came out of myself socially.”
Many of his classmates had passions and
pursuits outside of dentistry, be it photography
or music. He was drawn to dentistry in
part because, as with crafts like scenery building
and makeup, he could use his hands.
“Dentistry takes a constellation of talents
that are not just intellectual,” he says. “And
I think if you have that broad constellation
of talents, you’re going to have multiple
interests.”
And Tufts as a whole, he has come to discover,
cultivates that constellation. As part
of the Tufts Alumni Admissions Program
(he’s currently chair of the Berkshire
County committee), he has interviewed
more than 200 prospective undergraduate
students. “Part of what makes Tufts great is
the students—very eclectic, broad-minded,
talented, interesting students,” he says.
But it has become clear over the years
that many people don’t expect Radin to
have such an eclectic set of talents.
When people at theater
conferences hear that he works in
oral health, “invariably they say
something that annoys me a little
bit: Oh, so you’re really a dentist.
Even my mother says that.”
Yet he pursues both occupations
with the same professionalism.
Take Audrey II, the giant,
man-eating plant that puts the horror in
Little Shop of Horrors. Radin scoffed at the
plant available for rent (“a stuffed toy,” in
his opinion) and asked two local artists to
create something original for the Drama
Team production. It took nine months to
make Audrey II, and six puppeteers to work
it, but it was Broadway quality.
In 1995, he established the Yankee
Thespian Festival, an annual event for
theater students and teachers from New
England, New York and parts of Canada.
He served as director of the Massachusetts
Educational Theatre Association for 11
years. He has won several awards, including
a Points of Light award from the governor,
but his biggest honor was being selected by
his drama teacher peers in 2000 to be in the
national Educational Theatre Association’s
Hall of Fame.
In some ways, it is the flexibility of a dentist’s
schedule that makes his theater work
possible. During a typical week, he spends
two days at the school and three in his dental
24 tufts de ntal medicine sp r i n g 20 1 0