'Walking Dead' actor pays tribute to Twin Cities theater teacher

Actor and playwright Erik Jensen wrote this tribute to Denny Swanson, his Apple Valley High School theater teacher who perished in a head-on collision last Wednesday. Swanson, 70, established theater programs at three Twin Cities-area high schools and who was inducted into the Minnesota State High School League's Hall of Fame in 2013. He taught many theater lights, including Tony nominee Laura Osnes. Jensen, who lives in New York, flew into town for his service over the weekend.

Dennis Swanson saved my life.

In the theater and film worlds, we are prone to hyperbole and exaggeration. Actors, goes the common wisdom, are scoundrels, liars, cads, fantasists, lay-abouts, impractical dreamers. If you've ever seen a production of "The Music Man," you can bet that conman Harold Hill was more likely based on actors the writers knew than he was on any salesman that came to town. We are sellers of dreams. And we are always broke.

It's no wonder that hotels, motels and flophouses in turn-of-the-century towns hung up signs that said "No Theatricals." Theater is the place where ideas happen, where love blossoms, where revenge, sin, the glories and pitfalls of human existence, are compressed into two hours for your viewing pleasure. At its worst, theater pacifies us. At its best, it changes us. The theater can be a place to mock the powerful and lift up the downtrodden. It can even offer us hope. In other words, it is something truly dangerous. And it is glorious. Being invited into the world of storytellers is like being invited into a secret society. It is also a refuge.

Which brings me back to Denny Swanson. He saved my life. That is not hyperbole. It is a truth. He invited me into the theater when I was fourteen and truly lost. I don't want to write about me, I want to write about Denny — but in order to understand the magnitude of his impact on me and many others, context is imperative.

I came to Apple Valley High School a few years after the bottom fell out of my short life. I was born in Detroit Lakes, Minnesota, to too-young parents careening toward an inevitable divorce. As the saying goes, we didn't know we were poor, but we were. I ate sugar sandwiches for lunch and played with the mud that would collect when the snow melted off our brown and white trailer. I moved 11 or 12 times before I was 14. With some exceptions, the adults around me ranged from absent to truly abusive. Those who I could trust were terrified of those I couldn't. I was not going to end up okay.

Thankfully, my really kind mom remarried a wonderful guy and we moved to Apple Valley, where I entered Apple Valley High School as a sophomore. I started off on the wrong foot: I alienated the most popular kid in the "theater group." I talked back to a costume designer because I was too embarrassed to admit I couldn't afford those tights I was supposed to reimburse her for. (I still hate that shade of purple.) Angry and alone, I rejected others before they could reject me. I didn't know what else to do. I didn't have another model. There were no better angels of my nature to call upon.

Denny looked like Mark Twain and had the deepest, throatiest laugh (take Kathleen Turner's laugh, lower it two octaves, make it even more infectious and that might capture it). I signed up for his Theater 101 class. And it saved my life.

When I started, I didn't know how to take responsibility. I didn't know how to stand and be seen. I couldn't look anyone in the eye, out of fear and shame. But Denny made me look in his eyes. He assigned me the hardest monologues — and he expected me to learn them. He taught me a work ethic. He made me work for his respect. And then he said: "You are a good person. You can trust me. You are worth it."

He was the first man in my life to say that to me and mean it. Denny Swanson took the fantasy world that I had created to survive, and taught me how to use it to serve others. He took my pain and made it a gift.

By the time I graduated, Denny had directed me in plays by Ionesco, Beckett, Tom Stoppard. I painted sets, designed them, sang, acted, stayed late, became part of the student arts council, was in one-acts that went to state competition. I wore mustaches, beards, accents and attitudes that were not mine, and I felt freedom. He made me see my value. And he made me feel like I was the only one. But I wasn't. There were hundreds of us. Denny was on a mission. A mission to teach us how to "find your light"---onstage and off.

I had no idea how to follow this path professionally, but Denny showed me. He helped me get into Carnegie Mellon University — and get a scholarship, without which I would never have been able to attend. That schooling gave me my future. It gave me my life.

Our play "The Exonerated" ran for two years Off-Broadway. We traveled to Jordan in 2008 to interview Iraqi refugees for our play "Aftermath." We set out to make theater that transformed pain and struggle into hope. I did that because Denny expected me to.

Denny's sense of love and decency and honesty has remained with me for twenty-five years. As has his notion that storytelling is holy and essential; that people are more than their mistakes; and that everyone of us can be transformed.

In 2004, when "The Exonerated" came to Minneapolis' State Theater, starring Lynn Redgrave and Avery Brooks, Denny and some of my other extraordinary Apple Valley High School teachers were in the audience. I asked the cast if it would be okay if I came up on stage after the show. My wife and I were introduced; I took the mike. And I asked the man who had given me so much to stand and be seen. Denny did so, reluctantly--bows are, after all, for actors, not directors--and I said, very simply, "Mr. Swanson, thank you for the gift you gave me. Thank you for introducing me to my life." And 1500 people gave him the standing ovation his life deserves.