What I remember is sitting in Kaki’s office talking about theatre and constantly borrowing books from her wide, multi-tiered shelves – every book about theatre and nothing else. To this day, I don’t remember doing any work beyond answering the phone. Having met Kaki and grown friendly with her – mind you, she was a contemporary of my parents, with children of her own around my age – I was able to be assigned to her office for my work-study gig in my junior and senior years. I joined the Penn Players, the school’s longest established drama troupe, and in two semesters, I directed two shows, staged managed one, and appeared in one. I was most engaged with my time in the Annenberg Center, in my work study job in the box office, 20 hours each week, during my freshman and sophomore years. Having gone to Penn already in love with theatre, but convinced by many that it was no way to make a living or a life, I took stabs at other fields of interest, but none really resonated. There was, quite literally, always an open door, unless you wanted to talk privately I can’t recall her ever shutting anyone out for her own needs. Many kids at Penn, from the late 70s to the early 90s, would find their way to Kaki’s office, on the mezzanine level of the Annenberg Center, when she was the Associate Managing Director there, for knowledge, for caring.
But the person who I most wanted to read it, who I most wanted to have place it on her bookshelf, cannot.Ĭatherine “Kaki” Marshall was a mentor to me in my days as a student at the University of Pennsylvania, and I am hardly her only protegee. Presumably like any other author, I wrote it for many people to read. It would be wrong to say that I wrote Another Day’s Begun for any one person. But my most overwhelming emotion today, and every time I look at the finished book, is sadness. This is the realization of a dream that I had given up on long ago. Howard Sherman and Kaki Marshall, on their last in person visit in December 2019
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