Madeline Bugeau-Heartt went to New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts for her undergraduate studies with the intention of becoming a great actor. “I had a big dream and a clear goal,” she said. “I possessed a very enthused mindset along the lines of ‘Watch out, Broadway!’”
“I started out at one particular acting studio, which was wonderful, but rigid in some ways, and then, during my last year, I began to explore experimental and devised theater. It changed my life. I never realized I could make my own work,” said Bugeau-Heartt. “Once I had a taste of that, I was hooked. Experimental and devised theater is about processing the world through original, performative creation; about rejecting or subverting any traditional notions of what theater has to be in favor of what’s true. You can play with form. You can do it on your own or in collaboration with others. There’s a lot of freedom to be had there.”
Bugeau-Heartt, now in her third year at Harvard Divinity School (HDS) as a master of divinity student, is exploring theater’s many forms and how they can be used to meet the needs of her community and beyond. Spirituality has had varying functions and presentations for Bugeau-Heartt throughout her time here, guiding her toward creative projects (both theatrical and not) that foster and encourage connection, awareness, and compassion. Namely, performing her theater piece The Anchorite, organizing climate change workshops for her hometown in Maine, and her upcoming senior thesis project, re-envisioning Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.
Making Sense of Spiritual Inklings and Finding Harvard Divinity School
Bugeau-Heartt was raised quite secular. “Catholicism was somewhat of a bad word in my house, which is interesting because I'm fairly ‘Catholic-adjacent’ at this point. But we did not ‘do’ church. We did books in my house, and music, and film. But in my mid-20s, I started getting what I call the ‘God feelings’, and I was adamantly like, ‘oh, no, no, no--you've got the wrong girl!’,” she said. “I had no models of understanding for what those feelings were, so my burgeoning spirituality really scared me. I had this notion in my head that whatever this was, it was going to derail my art career. I tried to put those ‘God feelings’ in a box.”
When Bugeau-Heartt left New York City, she was still making theater, primarily solo performances, but she also farmed and took care of her grandmother who was suffering from Alzheimer's. All throughout that time, her feelings of spirituality were slowly evolving and maturing.
“I was harassing these poor ministers, any religious person I could find really, trying to talk to them about God and faith. I even came to an HDS open house once, about six years ago, and left after the opening remarks!” she said. “I just wasn’t ready and I possessed (and I say this lovingly toward myself) an immaturity then as I worked out this increasingly important part of my life. Then, COVID hit, and I thought, ‘this thing is clearly not going away. I should probably figure out what it is.’ So I put in an application and oh my, I'm glad I did!”
Bugeau-Heartt came to HDS with great trepidation. Where she had originally been turned off by her feelings of divine presence, a turnaround had occured, and that relationship with God had become precious to her.
“It was almost like this holy secret that I had. My relationship to God, the great mystery, the holy unknown ... it felt delicate, fragile, and profound,” she said. “I couldn't really explain it to anyone. There was a mine-ness to it. I didn't want to go to an institution and see it played out in real time and have that presence be crushed into something linear. I was frightened that academia would squelch it. Was I ready to have my faith challenged and examined? I waded my way into the realization that school could actually enrich my spirituality rather than act as a deterrent. I think that's been one of the great joy of being here. It's an expander. A revelation of what could be.”
Waking up to the Climate Crisis
During her first year at HDS, Bugeau-Heartt took the course “Ecofeminism” taught by Visiting Professor Emerita of Women’s Studies and Ethics Swasti Bhattacharyya and an independent reading and research group, through Plummer Professor of Christian Morals Matthew Ichihashi Potts’s “Apocalyptic Grief” class.
“It’s like someone took a baseball bat and whacked me on the head, in terms of my ‘climate awakening,’” she said. “This awakening has, to this day, changed my entire understanding of the world. I was so privileged to have avoided the realities of the climate collapse up until then. But the blinders were off and that was both a blessing and a curse; a blessing in the sense that it has led me to the work I am doing now and visions of how I want to continue to be a helper. It’s also changed my mindset in terms of how to think more robustly about kindness, community, neighborhood, and togetherness.
“It also really messed me up. I didn't know how to handle it, both the existential implications and the realities of the suffering that has been, is now, and is to come. How I have been and am still complicit. I was so hungry to learn, but I hadn’t set up any support systems for myself to handle that wave of information.”
Bugeau-Heartt said her “worldview got a lot bigger very quickly in that first year, in particular in learning about climate change.” There was a transition within her own spirituality from something she was coveting to, “how can I use this for good? What can I do to channel divine love through me in service?”
Formation of the Spiritual and Artistic Self
Bugeau-Heartt’s time at HDS has been marked by her passion for the arts and working to be a helper amidst the climate crisis.
“One of the many things that's incredible about HDS, is that there was an inherent trust offered to me right from the beginning. My creativity has been nurtured here through all the support, excitement, and trust granted to me by this institution and the wonderful people in it,” she said. “However, academia is demanding and for my own creativity, there hasn’t been a lot of spaciousness. I’ve been trying to suck every last little bit of juice out of this unique experience, because it's not going to last forever, but the go-go-go isn’t super conducive to art-making. I don’t take for granted however that there are spaces to express oneself.”
Bugeau-Heartt was able to do two student-initiated field education placements during her time at HDS: one being the writing and performing of an original theater piece and the other organizing climate facilitations—both for her community in York, Maine. She also found a theater community at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Perhaps most notable is the creative family she found in her peers at the Divinity School—beyond the talent and drive, there’s a notable hunger in the people she cherishes at HDS to make meaningful works.
Transforming Inner Spirituality into Outward Creativity and Change
Bugeau-Heartt’s first field education placement was a theater project called, The Anchorite. An anchorite was, in the Middle Ages, typically a young woman, who made a religious vow to be cloistered away for life, essentially as a hermit. There was a physical structure associated with this, wherein churches or religious spaces would build a hut attached to the side of the church. The anchorite would then be permanently shut away within this little structure, with a small window for the community to come and talk with her. Thus, the anchorite figure was still very much part of the community, oftentimes becoming a kind of holy seer or wise person.
“I was so excited about this wild thing I had learned about that I wanted to experiment with the idea of the anchorite,” she said. “I was also feeling a need coming from the people in my community: that everyone really needed a space to talk, without judgment, about meaningful things within their own lives. To reconnect with something deeper.”
Bugeau-Heartt made the performance piece wherein she sat in a little Episcopal church, in a wimple and a burlap, brown tunic. She did nine, four-hour sittings. There was a wooden divider and people from the community could visit her by moving behind the divider where she sat.
“I had Tarot-esque cards that I made, with questions on them, such as ‘who in your life has loved you?’ Or, ‘what do you think happens on the other side?’ There were probably 40 questions in all,” she said. “People could pick and answer. I would just sit there and listen. Often, there was a lot of crying, both from me and the other person. Because together we created a private and safe space to talk about their deeper humanity. How often do we actually get that uninterrupted space to talk about our truest selves? I am very grateful for that time.”
For her second field education placement this past summer, Bugeau-Heartt organized a series of community climate workshops for her town. (“You can see a thread of my trying to focus on my locality!” she said.) Those facilitations are currently happening.
“I am working with pre-existing organizations and institutions and individual community members within York to create a liberative, dialogical space to bring the collective together, to share with one another as we try to practice and vision ourselves into a better, climate-changed world,” she said.
While she was sitting for The Anchorite, in the burlap costume and often nervous because she never knew who was going to come around the corner, Bugeau-Heartt had her own spiritual practice, which was to try to self-empty.
“Essentially practicing the question of ‘how do I reduce Madeline and to allow more space for the divine?’ In that meditative space, whilst thinking of the wisdom of some of my spiritual guides, it was Mr. Rogers who came to me. I wasn't raised with church as I mentioned, but Fred Rogers was a household hero. I thought, ‘what if I remade that show?’ I tucked the idea away until it came time to think about my senior thesis,” she said.
Bugeau-Heartt said she admires the brilliance of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.
“Here's this guy, who was a minister, who made this really low-budget DIY children's show with puppets. The whole message of that show is about neighborhood, community, kindness, and goodness. About someone out there who loves you just the way you are. It changed people's lives,” she said. “There was some itch that was being scratched, a need that was being filled by this unlikely program. We don’t have a lot of storytelling right now that encourages those values of compassion, imagination, patience, love, and neighborliness.
“I want to make the thing I need that does not yet exist. I'm not sure exactly what form it's going to take, but Mr. Roger’s has this quote, ‘the greatest thing you can do is let others know that they are loved and capable of loving.’ How do you make something that encourages that? It's not sexy, per say, emphasizing goodness. How do you bring spirituality, maybe even in stealth mode, to a hungering, predominantly secular audience? You certainly don't need to be religious to talk about love, to talk about meaning, to talk about these existential, spiritual questions of what it means to be alive in the world right now.”
Reflecting on Harvard Divinity School and Beyond
Dorothy Day offers this prayer in her book, The Long Loneliness: “I offered up a special prayer, a prayer which came with tears and anguish, that some way would open up for me to use what talents I possessed for my fellow workers, for the poor.”
Bugeau-Heartt said that if she keeps praying that prayer, she will land where she’s supposed to land.
“I trust in that, not every day, but I do trust in that. I went for a long walk in the woods about a month ago, and had this quiet awakening, where it finally felt OK to look at the question of, what do I want to do after school?” she said. “Previously, the lens around this question had been narrow and discouraging. I would think things like, ‘that might make sense on paper, but it doesn't light me up, my body is not responding to that.’ There's a great Howard Thurman quote: ‘don't ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and go do that, because what the world needs is people who have come alive.’ So, what happens if I start to dream myself into that mentality and hold this faith that I've always gotten to where I was supposed to go?”
Bugeau-Heartt said she hopes to take some time to allow herself space after school to let things settle, to process, and to listen carefully.
“My prayer is that whatever comes will involve something creative and artistic. I want to be making things. I want to be helping people through this wild transition that is the climate collapse. I want to be of service. I want to accompany people through their lives and be accompanied in turn. I have faith in those things. I’ll keep following that joy.
“My coming to HDS is a great example of that trusting in a God-given feeling despite the unknown. That trust has always led me to the rest of my life—led me to wonderful people and things I could not have imagined. Why would I stop doing that? So, it's not neat and tied up in a bow (is it ever?). For now, I'm here to be, discern, follow my nose, and to soak up what I can. To do what I need to do in this life, I need to take that time.”
—by Rachel Mallett