Faculty of the Week: David Rhee
By ARYAN AGARWAL, ADELLE PITTS, THEA VAUGHAN, and FORREST ZENG
In the depths of the Phillips Hall sits a warmly lit English classroom, illuminated by a few incandescent standing lamps. It’s furnished with a small armchair in the back right corner. The place is spiffy-clean, centered around a neatly kept Harkness table. The walls, decorated with modern art, host a window in the back of the room that looks out at a white wall. On first impression, the room is welcoming, but that alone would be an injustice to the instructor to whom it belongs.
Instructor in English David Rhee is one of the most famed and interesting personalities at the Academy. Despite being “just” an English teacher, there is no number of words that even Shakespeare himself could use to purely capture his essence. Apart from his role in the English Department, Rhee is as dorm faculty and an advisor in Cilley Hall, serves on the Community Conduct Committee, and fills various roles in the theater department.
Before teaching English at Exeter, Rhee had a career in acting after graduating from the New York University’s Circle in a Square Theatre School. Rhee became a prominent actor, being featured on the Tony award-winning Broadway musical Thoroughly Modern Millie. He has worked at numerous theaters across America and starred as a guest on the prominent TV show Law and Order. In 2015, Rhee returned to NYU and received an MFA in Dramatic Writing at the Tisch School of the Arts. Recently, Rhee co-founded the Token Theatre Chicago and is currently the theater’s Artistic Director. The theater’s website describes its mission as aiming to “change the narrative and shatter the false constructs about Asian Americans.”
For Rhee, acting and literature were never the plan. “I actually hated reading when I was growing up,” he said. “The TV was my babysitter. I went to the University of Illinois as a business major, mostly because all my friends went there.”
At the University of Illinois, however, Rhee experienced a change of heart. “I took an English class, and it just blew me away. There was a professor who talked about literature in such a fascinating way. Reading was more than just a book. These characters, like in A Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man, came to life,” Rhee said. “Also, Dead Poets Society had just come out, which sounds ridiculous, but I could not stop crying while watching it.”
He would go on to switch his major from business to English literature. He eventually began working on a PhD comparing Korean literature and American post-colonial war literature. Rhee never did end up finishing his PhD, however.
“To be frank, I hated it,” Rhee said.
Instead, he chose to switch paths again, this time to acting. “I called my dad, and I told him that I wanted to try acting. At that time, I had always wanted to act. I had done acting in college and other things growing up. So I quit, and got into an acting school in New York City.”
Being the son of two Asian-American immigrants, Rhee immediately began to see problems with how Asian-Americans were treated in the acting scene. “Every time we were represented on screen or stage, it was either the sidekick or someone who spoke with an accent,” Rhee described. “I wanted to see if I could make a change.”
As he was running his theater company in Chicago and participating in musicals all across America, Rhee developed a passion for teaching English, “I was teaching Bible study to a bunch of high school students,” he described. “And I thought to myself: ‘I love being an English major, and I love working with high school students.’ It felt organic to become an English teacher.”
Though becoming an English teacher might’ve felt natural, like his acting career, being hired at Exeter wasn’t Rhee’s first plan either. “I searched up ‘best high schools in America,’ and Exeter came up. When I found out what Phillips Exeter was, I thought that I would never get a job there. As a joke, I sent in my resume,” Rhee said. “I was looking all over the country for other schools in the meantime, but out of the blue, the head of the English Department at the time, Nat Hawkins, reached out to me.”
Though Exeter expressed interest in taking Rhee on, at the time, he was still heavily unsure about leaving behind his theater company in Chicago. Nevertheless, he visited the campus, and his doubts were quickly quelled. “The school offered to pay for me to come to campus and interview. I thought it would just be a free trip to New Hampshire,” Rhee said. “I came expecting a free trip. But the way the department treated me, the way the students were, and how serious they were in their studies, made me go, ‘I want to try this.’”
Out of all the things that make Exeter special, Rhee loves the Academy’s supportive community the most. “The number one thing I like about this place is the community,” he said. “When I come from Chicago, for example, I’ll call someone to pick me up and the airport, and they’re there to pick me up! I’ll be in D-Hall, and be surrounded by students and faculty. I have a dinner conversation every night, which is something I’ve never experienced before.”
As a teacher, and also as an actor, Rhee approaches English differently, especially Shakespeare. “I love teaching Shakespeare from an actor’s point of view,” he described. “Shakespeare wasn’t meant to be taught at a table and read. It was meant to be watched and acted. I have my students break down a monologue the way an actor would do it.”
Coming from an immigrant background, Rhee also strives to include a diversity of voices in his material. “I’m a strong believer in the classics. If I could teach and act Shakespeare for the rest of my life, I would. But I also believe in the idea of diversity,” he said.
Rhee, to say the least, is a difficult teacher. Most teachers in the English department don’t give their students quizzes of any kind. Rhee does, to the dismay of some students. “Pop quizzes force students to actually do the reading,” he explained. “My pop quizzes aren’t obscure references—they’re about very basic things, like names. All they do is ensure kids do the entirety of the reading so we can discuss more interesting ideas during Harkness. My discussions are vibrant because kids have actually done the reading.”
“I think his pop quizzes are misunderstood,” upper Max Liu said. “If you do the homework, it’s free points.”
“When people call me a difficult teacher, I take it as a compliment,” said Rhee.
Rhee’s passion is obvious to all. “His unique background in acting and playwriting has allowed him to fill discussions with passion,” said Liu. “He encourages us to ask questions and inquire at a fast pace, which allows each discussion to thrive spontaneously.”
“He thinks about each kid as a person, not just as a student,” advisee and prep Asher Bravo described, praising Rhee for his ability to connect with people. “He understands that it’s difficult here. It’s difficult academically, athletically, and socially—and that’s how he’s able to be close with his advisees.”
On Tuesday check-ins in Cilley Hall, Rhee is a massive presence. Students from all over in the dorm crowd into the fourth-floor common room while he is on duty, to the chagrin of some students studying in the common room.
“Whenever he’s on duty, there are always students hanging out with him in the common room,” Cilley Hall Dorm Head Ellen Glassner said. “Mr. Rhee brings great energy to the dorm. He truly enjoys working with our students, and they can feel that.”
Part of his energy is cheerful and persistent humor. “He loves to laugh along with you,” advisee and lower Hugo Shinn said. “He can crack a joke any moment, whether we are in the common room for check-in or in advisory.”
Glassner agreed, adding, “My husband and I love laughing with him—he’s got a great sense of humor and he loves to find the humor in things.”
As an advisor, dorm parent, and teacher, Rhee treats students equally and with his full attention. “I value his genuine interest in knowing you and knowing your point of view, how you think,” Glassner concluded. “In this way, he makes genuine connections with people.”
