Mallory Duncan turns the sharp corner of the commons, enters the theater hallway, and turns to find the Elvis room, a room known for the small headshot of Elvis Presley that hangs on the door. Inside, she looks for her theater teacher, Kelly Weber. However, the year is 2004, 20 years ago, when Duncan was just a high school senior. Now, Duncan walks into the halls of the high school, entering the theater office as the teacher, not the student. 

Who was Mallory Duncan before Clayton? 

Duncan, a new face in the theater department, attended Meramec Elementary School, Wydown Middle School, and CHS, coming full circle from her earlier education to her career as the school’s new theater director. 

Growing up, Duncan always had a passion for the arts and performance. She often stood out from other kids because of her determination to find success in the things she loved.

“I was a very different kind of kid. I was into theater and music, and I didn’t feel like I belonged anywhere until I came to Wydown,” Duncan said. “Going into the Wydown theater program is when I took off and found my people.”

In high school, Duncan participated in band, yearbook and theater productions. 

“I felt like I belonged because I found people that had the same interests as me. [Clayton] is where I thrived because I had the most amazing teachers,” Duncan said.

Duncan was also present at the high school to implement what the school now calls the Student-run musical (SRM). Back then, the SRM was a production in which the student theater leaders wrote the script, dialogue, and storyline. Prior to Duncan’s senior year, the music was conducted and composed by the students. However, she decided her senior year to switch from creating musicals for the SRM to putting on pre-existing productions, bringing much more success to the theater department. 

After high school, Duncan attended the school of arts at NYU, majoring in theater and specializing in musical theater.

While there, she studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, participated in Shakespeare performances, and spent time in the city working with actor and director Alan Rickman and others in the industry. 

While pursuing her undergraduate degree in New York, Duncan completed an internship with Opening Act New York. This group provided free after-school theater programming for Bronx students who did not have access to the arts, including theater. 

“It was crazy to see a place like New York, where you think there’s so much art and theater, but these kids had no exposure. That solidified my desire to become a teacher,” she said. “Coming back from that internship just made me realize how lucky I was to have gone to Clayton. You don’t think about it; maybe it crosses your mind, but when you see the disparity so much, you have so much gratitude for what you have.”

On the road to becoming an actress at NYU, Duncan came close to dropping out of school as she no longer wanted to pursue a career in acting. Inspired by her mother, a public school teacher, Duncan believed another career was more suitable. 

“I realized I didn’t want to be an actor, and I was thinking about how we’re spending a lot of money. I knew I wanted to be a teacher, so that’s where my dad kept me there to continue to learn,” Duncan said. “I saw how people kind of change whenever you’re auditioning, just because you’re competing for the same things, and it did not seem fun for me.”

After her undergraduate degree, she received her Master’s in Education from UMSL with a specialty in theater education. After completing her master’s degree, Duncan found it difficult to find employment due to a lack of available theater jobs. 

“Theater jobs are really hard to find because there’s one in every school, and when people get them, they don’t leave them,” Duncan said.

Luckily, once Duncan found employment, she knew she was pursuing the right career. After teaching middle school English in Ritnour for three years, she taught at Rockwood Middle School for her first theater job. 

While at Rockwood, Duncan handled most of the production responsibilities, including coming in on weekends to build the sets for shows, teaching six classes and directing after-school plays and musicals. However, after trying to keep up with the responsibilities, she recognized this was not sustainable.

She left Rockwood and taught English at Hixson Middle School until she saw an opening at her alma mater. 

As Duncan transitions from teaching middle school to high school, she reflects on her rewarding experiences with a diverse range of students. 

“If you can teach middle school, you can teach any age because it’s such a unique time of life,” Duncan said. “Every kid is going through something at some point in middle school, so by the time you get to high school, everyone’s still in that time but just transitioning out of it and developing more.”

Duncan described middle school as a pivotal time when students begin to navigate their identities and explore who they are. 

“This is the age where we’re having classes of kids that are just trying [theater] out for the first time and seeing if it sticks, and it is awesome,” Duncan said. “Especially finding one or two kids a year that are brand new and love it, [who] end up finding their people. It’s something amazing.” 

Who is Mallory Duncan now? 

At the high school, Duncan spends half of her time at Wydown on B-days and half at the high school on A-days. At the middle school, she teaches musical theater, whereas at the high school, she teaches theater arts and advanced acting and directing studio. She hopes that this way, she will network and plant the seed early on in younger middle school kids to get them into theater and have them stick with it up until high school. 

At the high school, Duncan teaches entry-level theater, discussing with her students what makes a story, while in her Theater Arts class, she teaches the importance of how body, voice and props can tell a story without dialogue—acting serves as an intro into theater through reading plays and monologues. On the other hand, Duncan’s advanced class is a year-long course that focuses on reading plays and navigating what it looks like to be a director versus an actor. 

What does Mallory Duncan aspire to create?

In the months to come, Duncan already has ideas for future productions. Duncan will be putting on “Twelve Angry Jurors,” this fall. Then, in the spring, the high school will put on “Les Miserable,” Duncan’s senior year musical in 2004. 

She hopes that her return will allow her to make the theater environment even more welcoming and successful than when she entered it as a student. 

“I think about the people I went to school with every day, in certain ways and certain halls and their memory comes up,” Duncan said. “The experiences I had were great, but they also could have been better in certain circumstances. I’m trying to see how we can make theater here the most inclusive place where people feel safe and they want to come and perform.”