Kansas Wesleyan University - Coyote Yearbook (Salina, KS)

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Learning and Moving On William Weaver Bill Weaver did his undergraduate work at Marymount and he earned his masters at the University of Noithem Colorado at Greeley. He said, After getting my 'graduate degree, I came to Marymount and worked as Technical Director for five- and-a-half years. After resigning from there, I was really at a loss. Marymount had given me all I wanted from it. I wasn't growingg I knew it was time to move on. Weaver's became a fcameraman at Channel 6, a local cable station. Taking the knowledge of video he'd gained from there, Weaver then began working with Mid- America Productions. That's always been my history, I get into a place, learn as much as I can learn there, and then it's time to move on, he said. Weaver soon found out that he couldn't leave theatre completely behind. I Uied at first . . . but in six months I was crawling the walls, he said. Weaver soon became associated with the Salina Community Theatre where he's been involved with Mr. Roberts, Deathtrap, Mass Appeal, Talley's Folley, and Games. He also directed an experimental production of Bent. His first production at Kansas Wesleyan was The Elephant Man, which he .followed with the obscure Neil Simon comedy God's Favorite. Weaver began the next season with Children of a Lesser God. I leamed more from that show about the human spirit or even about theatre than I have from any other show I've done. I saw a cast that was ready to tear itself apart until about three days before opening night and then something happened. It all tumed around, he said. I've done alot of plays and musicals and Children ofa Lesser God was by far the hardest play I've ever done in my life. It demanded so much from the director and the actorsg it was just incredibly hard. Weaver's final play was the musical Grease with which he intended to make Kansas Wesleyan history. In all my years of directing, I don't think I've ever had a cast that has jelled so early. It seems like three nights into rehearsal and the cast was like a family, as if they'd been there for years. I've never had a cast work so hard and never complaing I could keep them there as long as I wanted to. I swear that the work that I did on Grease is something that a director probably never experiences but once in a lifetime. I feel very privileged to have been able to have worked with that calibre of talent. Saying goodbye to those people and that enviomment took its toll on me. by Brian David Phillips Francis Roesner William Weaver Not Pictured: I would love to have forty people try out for seven parts. That's when you really see the cream of the crop. That's where you really learn where the talent is. Photo by Brian Phillips. ,,,....i,. , , , Alot of people who have had the lead roles in my plays have learned something about themselves. The word can't doesn't have to exist in their vocabularies. They know they can do things which they thought they couldn't do before. Photo by Cindy Wunder. Dr. Wayne Montgomery Speech 62 Drama! 21

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Kaye's Party: Bonnie Painter, Rhea McNett, Jernard Burks, Kaye Dudley, Dr. William Clyde Brown, Brian Phillips, Bobby Jones, Trisha Jones, Craig Hauschild, Jan Trulson, and Lora Flusser. Photo by Kirsten Stanton. . Q wi? 3' V :ii QW? 'V TIT , ' v 5 r Kaye Dudley is known for making the holidays a little brighter for students away from home with treats in the campus mail boxes and notes saying, Hi, Sweeties! Photo by Kirsten Stanton. 20 !Speech and Drama Being Her Best Margaret Kaye Dudley Haunting the second floor of Fine Arts for the last time in 1986-87 was Kaye Dudley. After years of service to the college, Dudley retired from Kansas Wesleyan. Over the years she racked up quite a list of accomplishments and honors. She had received the Distinguished Service Award, had a volume of the Coyote yearbook dedicated to her, and had twice gained recognition through awards from the Drama Department. When I first began teaching at Kansas Wesleyan, there were only two classes offerred in speech. Now we have a major, said Dudley. Although her own special emphasis was speech, Dudley also picked up the theatre programqwhen it was all but gone at KW. Students had come to her wishing to have plays and she went for it. She directed Harvey, A Man Called Peter, Cheaper by the Dozen, and An Evening of One Acts. S h e w a s al s o th e supervisinglassistin g professor for the student directed Come Back Little Sheba. In the area of forensics, Dudley has managed the Kansas State High School Activities Association Regional Speech and Drama Festival for five years at KW, and the State Festival for two years. She has also taken students to high school meets as judges. In 1986, Dudley also took a forensics squad from KW to compete at the college level. She was a receipient of the KSAL Nice Person of the Week Award. She received her Ten-Year Award from former President Bratton., Although voted to be Commencement speaker three times, Dudley has done so twice. Her service to the college has included consistantly teaching an overload and establishing a KW Special Projects Fund to help students, Phil lDudley, her husbandl says we have assisted at least fifteen. My life has been mostly teaching. I was born and reared to help others be the best that they can be. It all began when I was a child carrying food to the neighbors. Dudley said, I try to do the very best that I can. by Brian David Phillips Lynn Barnes Kaye Dudley

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Dr. Janet Juhnke not only teaches Shakespeare, she tries to learn as much about Shakespeare as she can. Photo by Kirsten K. Stanton. 22 !English One of the many classes Dr. Janet Juhnke teaches is Shakespeare. Over interterm she went to class too. It was a workshop on Shakespeare's Text in Performance. The workshop was funded by Kansas State, the Arts Commission, and the Kansas Commission for the Humanities. The actors came from the California Alliance for Creative Theatre, but they were trained in the Royal Shakespeare Company. For several years they have taken different Shakespeare plays to different campuses. The pattern is to do it with only five actors. The professors who participated in the workshop had to go through an application procedure to be accepted into the program. We got brochures from K- State. I had to write a letter saying why I would like to be in a Shakespeare seminar with actors from London, what my interest was in Shakespeare, how the seminar might help me in my professional life. So basically I just wrote them a letter and sent them a vitag and I was selected. After becoming one of the fifteen to participate in the workshop, Juhnke found out it wouldn't be all fun and games. After.I was selected, I found Shakespeare and Performance ,out I had to write a paper. We were each assigned a topic. I wrote on the lovers, Ferdinand and Miranda, in The Tempest. Although the workshop contained a great deal of work and effort it only lasted three days. It was very intensive. We went all day, very little break, and then in the evening we went to the play. One evening we went to see the actors do selections from Pinter, and the next evening we went to see The Tempest. It was interesting to see these actors the day before and the morning after to get our reactions to the productions and get some feedback. K-State was the actors' first stop in the United States. That was the premiere of their production of The Tempest. Other states on the route were California, North Carolina, New York, Texas, and some others. The workshop had direct benefits for Juhnke as she taught her course in the Spring right after the seminar. I think it helped me to see some nuances in The Tempest. It's also given me an appreciation of the importance of using performance in the teaching of the text... The single female member of the company tried an experiment with us in interpretation. She used a single speech by Ariel and then a speech from Henry V. She would tty out different ways of saying that speech and those lines. For example we went down the rows and each person had to say one word Dr. Janet Juhnke and you would try to feed into the next person's word, just to highlight the different words. And then one line, and then we divided into two groups and we had to figure out a way, as a choral group, to give this line and then the speech. The two groups did it totally differently. It was really interesting to see the possibilities of oral readings and trying different tones of voice and how that impinges on interpretation. We saw how interpretation and performance are related. I think it inspired me to try to do a little bit more performance related things in class. Juhnke changed the structure of her course to accommodate her new views. I'm not having my students write a major paper. They're writing four smaller papers on performance problems for different plays. It's harder because I have to think of performance problems to lift out for the different plays. The first one they worked on was Taming of the Shrew and the problem of Kate's final speech. Is she satiric, is she faithful, what is her motivation when she says that women should be submissive to their husbands? I wouldn't have done that if not for the seminar. And it may not work. Who knows? It's just something I'm going to try. V, I did feel privileged to be a part of the whole experience. It was valuable. I love the, sponsors for brin in it in. 5 by Brian Dcwid Phil ips Dr. William Clyde Brown Dr. Janet Juhnke Y