Corbin Doyle shared their story and experiences with us recently and you can find our conversation below.
Hi Corbin, thank you for taking the time to reflect back on your journey with us. I think our readers are in for a real treat. There is so much we can all learn from each other and so thank you again for opening up with us. Let’s get into it: What is a normal day like for you right now?
Get up 5am. Let the good ole dog out to run wild in the backyard chasing invisible critters. Make coffee while feeding the cat and the dog. Get on shoes in the dark and go walk the dog around White Rock. Listen to the birds moving in the dark and cool and hopefully cooler morning. Take breaths. Go home and quickly get ready for work. Say goodbye to Trish. Long drive to Addison. Thirty minutes of semi quiet and a few funny jokes from Will my colleague. Then it’s a maelstrom of teaching students from 7th to 12th grades all day. Meetings. Emails. Lots of prep for film festivals, watching edits, reading scripts, talking with students. Long commute home listening to Daffo, Wet Leg, or Waylon. Cook dinner. Help parents. Hang with Trish. Walk dog more. Try to write and make some. Sleep. Rinse and repeat.
Can you briefly introduce yourself and share what makes you or your brand unique?
I was raised in Texas. Mostly in Dallas, but I spent a lot of time in my youth in the panhandle. I tried so hard to get out of here, out of Dallas, out of Texas, spending a lot of time at libraries and museums dreaming of other worlds. I still dream of stories, but I know Dallas is a ridiculously rich city for arts and culture, and it has been giving back to me daily since I even knew better and 100% since we moved back in the mid 90’s.
A great example of this is the next big project my Advanced Video Production students are starting. For the last 28 years I have been a teacher at Greenhill School in Addison where I started the video production filmmaking program. In a mid-semester need to shake things up with the advanced students, I stayed up all night and wrote a very nebulous and sprawling email. It asked for a North Texas arts or cultural organization to help me build a partnership for a project for my current advanced students. I said all through the email that I know what I was asking for wasn’t clear, and that was kind of the point, because I really wanted this to be a partnership. I wasn’t seeing the students going to a place and making documentaries. I wasn’t seeing them doing interviews. I wanted them to be motivated by something in this city outside of themselves. And through research and writing I wanted them to make narrative films within this partnership. I sent this email out to about twenty different groups. I never heard back from about half, and that makes sense based on my weird question, but I did hear back from many, and we started conversations.
One group really seemed to understand what I was asking and why. They understood the intent and the process. That place was the Nasher Sculpture Center. A place that means a lot to me as a Dallasite and an artist. Mr. Nasher would come to my art exhibitions when I was just starting out. It always made me giddy when he came by the gallery because he collected amazing things and we would have joyous conversations, but maybe even more because I grew up sliding on the planters in NorthPark like lots of Dallas kids. The welcome evening in the spring at the Nasher for their new director, Carlos Basualdo, happened right when I was working on this email. I emailed him after talking to him that night, and he replied that next day saying he was interested. He got me in touch with the great Anna Smith, Curator of Education at the Nasher, and she took over. She simply understood what we are trying to do. The students are getting access to an upcoming show and from seeing those works, doing research on the works and the artist, and combining this work with their own stories to make their own short, narrative films. There will be a screening of these Greenhill films at the Nasher on Sunday, April 19th. A lot is still under wraps for now, but I am so grateful for the Nasher. I am so grateful for Anna. I am so grateful for Carlos and him not deleting the email. I am so grateful for Greenhill. And I am so grateful for Dallas.
Great, so let’s dive into your journey a bit more. What did you believe about yourself as a child that you no longer believe?
I thought I was going to be a doctor. I don’t really know where that idea came from or why. I took a lot of science classes in high school and college. At the same time, I found, literally fell into, Meadows School of the Arts at SMU and that was a divine interaction. Every day I had science classes and labs during the morning and afternoons, and art classes until late at night. During this time my body really started to fail on a pretty epic scale. That was a rough time. When I started to heal, I really understood with absolute clarity that life was held by a thread. With that knowledge I knew I had to follow what my healing guts were screaming at me to do, and that was the arts, a world I never really existed in before Meadows.
Was there ever a time you almost gave up?
There were a lot of times that I thought I had made a fatal error following this life. But it was never about me but about my partner, my children, and my parents. I have those days where you feel like you should have provided for them more. Overall, those feelings are pretty fleeting nowadays.
Alright, so if you are open to it, let’s explore some philosophical questions that touch on your values and worldview. What would your closest friends say really matters to you?
I was lucky to be that last group at Meadows to have Roger Winter as my teacher. In many ways he was very unhelpful. I’m almost positive most of my students for the last 28 years at Greenhill would say the same thing about me. But I believe in that. Because Roger more than anyone in my life in the arts demanded that I think for myself. He would show us lots of models of other roads, but it always came down to us finding our own roads, methods, and stories. That is everything to me now. Everything.
It’s the 75th year of Greenhill School. And we’re also doing our ten-year accreditation review. Between these two milestones and the work involved with them, there has been a lot of space to look back and see the path. Greenhill truly is a singular place. It let a guy from Dallas who had moved away and then moved back home pitch the idea of starting a film program for 7th through 12th graders. A program that has grown into a large group of makers at all levels who have had films juried into festivals all around the world and has alums working in and out of the arts throughout the world. Everything I teach is a model of what I wish I had when I was their ages. I don’t think many schools would do that. Founded in 1950 by Bernard and Helen Fulton to be a nonsectarian, co-educational, uniform free school, which welcomes so many people who may not feel welcome in other spaces. It truly is a singular place.
Okay, so before we go, let’s tackle one more area. What is the story you hope people tell about you when you’re gone?
I spend so much time teaching that I don’t get to spend much time making. I once had the ability to balance being a spouse, a father, a teacher, and a maker. I’m trying to get my practice back, the momentum is increasing, and that feels really good, but I also feel like the clock is ticking, and I’m trying to get away from those thoughts.
I am not trying to make filmmakers here at Greenhill. That can and has happened. But that is not the goal. Like Roger Winter I am trying to help these students think creatively for themselves. I want them to be able to build a practice so they can sustain this creativity far beyond these walls, because that will be impactful for any individual, project, or job they embrace. That can give them the grit to push themselves to keep making. Making is so important to life for so many reasons. I see it every day. And not always the reasons you think. Life often presents unimaginable challenges, and I am always reminded that the act of making forges lifelong friendships that wouldn’t have existed otherwise. And if that isn’t why we make stuff I don’t know what is.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.greenhill.org/
- Other: Nasher – https://www.nashersculpturecenter.org/
Image Credits
Mary Aidala, Tri C.I.A. Productions, Charlie Waldman, Oliver Ferris-Rojas
