‘Secret Schoolhouse’ unlocks wonder through mystery, magic

IOWA CITY — When 170-plus students and community members poured out of The James Theater after 9 p.m. April 12, the night still was unseasonably warm, the stars still were dulled by the Iowa City lights and all the stresses of school and work and family and friendships remained.

“It's been a tough day,” Peter Aguero told those lucky enough to snag a “golden ticket” to gain entry to University of Iowa professor David Gould’s “Secret Schoolhouse” that evening. “Somebody told me earlier today, that it was Wednesday. Those are hard days. If you have a job, that's like halfway in between the only times when you're free.”

Aguero — who lives in Queens, New York, and gained renown as a Moth StorySLAM host and GrandSLAM champion — flew to Iowa City to emcee the event and warned the schoolhouse crowd they weren’t likely to change the world in their two hours together.

“I promise you that at 9 o’clock, when we walk out of here, the world will still be hard,” he said.

But maybe they could change someone’s disposition; refresh someone’s perspective; lighten someone’s load — even if only briefly — through joy and awe and surprise.

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“Is anybody out there?” was the question that kicked off the evening from a familiar voice and then the familiar face of one of Iowa’s most famous sons — actor Ashton Kutcher, who appeared via Zoom to present his thoughts on surprise and delight.

Novelties, he said, get less novel the more you experience them — risking a jaded existence even in the most remarkable settings.

“At one point, I saw Snoop Dogg smoke a joint with Willie Nelson and was like, ‘What is happening right now?’” he said. “I was like, ‘This is the craziest thing that's ever happened in life.’ But then the next time you see Snoop Dogg smoke a joint with Eminem, you're like, 'Yeah, well I've seen Snoop Dogg smoke a joint before. And this isn’t as crazy as it was the first time I saw Snoop Dogg smoke a joint with Willie Nelson.”

But even in a world where celebrities and presidents are just regular people with real lives, Kutcher said he continues to find awe and wonder in three places: extraordinary craftsmanship; genius — like the ability to reorder the mundane; and generosity.

“From the moment we're born, we're born as these selfish creatures that just want to take take take take take take take from our parents,” he said. “But then you see these rare cases and of people being generous with zero agenda. And that's always surprising to me. And I search for it, I hunt for it, I look and read the news for it.”

Gould is an administrator with the UI’s Belin-Blank International Center for Gifted Education and Talent Development and a member of the honors faculty. The Secret Schoolhouse event was an offshoot of one of his “life design” courses — meant to revive students facing outside pressures and to tie them more closely to community members, who also have endured a pandemic and inflation and a social justice reckoning, among other things.

The event — littered with magic and poetry and rap and tears — required everyone invited there to step into a mystery, committing two hours to a trust it would be time well spent.

“Tonight, what you all have done, is given yourself up to the idea of wonder,” Aguero said. “You've given yourself up to the idea of, you don't know what's going to happen. And that's beautiful.”

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Vanessa Miller covers higher education for The Gazette.

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