Actor Paul Tines stars as a teacher now
Paul Tines has danced on Broadway, acted with Anita Bryant and played a pack of gum in a TV commercial.
How, exactly, did he wind up running the Ward Center for the Arts at St. Paul's Schools?
"I love acting," he says, "but I prefer to make a living."
For nearly three years, he's earned that living by pushing the limits of high school drama -- staging serious, thoughtful works about AIDS, suicide and concentration camps. He's also pushed his own limits -- taking over a center that focuses on all art, from painting to dancing to jazz, for kindergartners through 12th-graders.
Mr. Tines fell into teaching while working at a summer camp in New Hampshire. From there, he became drama director of a boarding school in Boston -- producing plays while running a boys' dorm.
"It was an incredible feeling teaching what had been taught to me," says Mr. Tines, 42, who lives downtown. "I found my niche."
Years later, he became head of theater at Choate Rosemary Hall, a prep school in Connecticut, and helped to bring graduates including Glenn Close, Michael Douglas and Jamie Lee Curtis into the classroom.
Since joining the St. Paul's Schools, Mr. Tines has beefed up the curriculum -- adding a summer theater school, weekend workshops and classes with the Maryland Institute, College of Art."Sometimes I'll talk to friends in New York and London. They'll ask, 'Why do you keep working with kids?' " says Mr. Tines, whose students have gone on to Broadway and MTV. "I believe in the process. The education that goes on in the theater is something that kids take with them on into adulthood."
Richard and Hannah Zurndorfer are two home builders who take pride in their cheap materials and lightweight construction.
The Northwest Baltimore couple make dollhouses from cardboard boxes and contact paper -- light enough for a child to play with on a hospital bed, yet sturdy enough to withstand puttering by little hands. During the past seven years, they have donated dozens of their handmade projects to local children's hospitals, with a particular emphasis on the Maryland School for the Blind.
"When you buy one in a store, you can't get into the rooms," says Mr. Zurndorfer, 76, demonstrating how easy it is for a child to reach into the wide open spaces of his rooms. "We do better with just the sides of an apple box."
A retired printer, Mr. Zurndorfer uses the former tools of his trade -- a pica pole and X-ACTO knife -- to carve out the rooms and "wallpaper" the interiors. For the furnishings, he relies on found materials. A screw and a metal washer can become a candle in a golden candlestick. A spool and a spindle make a nice lamp.
"I can say there is nothing today we can't duplicate," says Mr. Zurndorfer, who relies on toy stores for only the tiniest items, such as dishes and foodstuffs.
Mrs. Zurndorfer, 74, specializes in needlework, providing crocheted rugs and wardrobes full of linens so children can change the sheets and blankets.
There's not enough money in the world to buy one of the Zurndorfers' creations, but there is enough time for them to make more. The couple, who will celebrate their 55th anniversary next month, say they would love to hear from other hospitals or nonprofits interested in their work.
Laura Lippman