Margaret Castleman, '69 (BardCorps)
Files
Interviewee Role
Alumni/ae/x
Class Year
1969
Other Program
Theater Major
Interviewer
Helene Tieger, '85
Description
Margaret Castleman recalls her arrival at Bard in the mid-sixties as a "preppy" dance student, and getting "swept up in the whole hippie thing"; choosing the theater program over dance; feeling lost and undirected after dropping out for a semester; returning to Bard and having to disassociate herself from her former friends in order to focus; acknowledging Bard's role in helping her learn her craft; performing Tartuffe with a French accent as her Senior Project. She remembers Professor Neil McKenzie who connected her with an agent with whom she still works; leaving Bard and traveling to England to perform in Quote, by Bob Rockman, and having this experience launch her career; getting a scholarship with Alvin Ailey; and later living and working in Brooklyn as a choreographer.
Keywords
Neil McKenzie, William Driver, Robert Rockman, Charles Kakatsakis, Robbins House, Sands House, Schuyler House, Carriage House Theater
Location
Stevenson Library.
Interview Date
10-22-2011
Interview Duration
13:23
Recommended Citation
Castleman, Margaret, "Margaret Castleman, '69 (BardCorps)" (2011). BardCorps -- All Oral Histories. 23.
https://digitalcommons.bard.edu/oral_hist/23
Rights Management
The use of any image or audio from the Bard College Archives without permission is prohibited.
Significant Quote
"I had a very hard time here initially. [I was] totally vulnerable to peer pressure, and to the wrong kind of peer pressure. So to have to come back and face that, and to disassociate myself [from] that sort of set the rules for my life in terms of how to be an individual. You have to go your own path."