Kansas Wesleyan University - Coyote Yearbook (Salina, KS)

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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

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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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The Glass Woman Is... Patricia T raxler Although she has been teaching the Creative Writing course at Kansas Weslayan for seven years, Patricia Traxler doesn't come in contact with most students because her course is taught only during the summer. Traxler is a professional poet and novelist from San Diego. When I first moved here I wanted to find piece- work which is how I sustain myself. She came to the college and convinced them that there should be an 'introductory course in Creative Writing during the summer and that she was the person to teach it. Traxler has had two collections of her own poetry published CBlood Calendar and The Glass Womanj, has edited a collection by other writers, and has just finished her first novel. Her work has appeared in such periodicals as Cottonwood Review, The Malahat Review, Ms. Magazine, The Nation, and Poetry Now. Poetry is my main love. I've written fiction off and on. Reading novels has always been a treat for me...I find, I just want to write a poem and that's what I do. Wesleyan isn't her only contact with the college communities. She was poet- in-residence at the University of Kansas during the Spring term of 1987. I travel around a lot. I know the people in the writing community and that's where I maintain my contact. Traxler said she does not like to goto too many writer's conferencesfbecause for her they can be impediments to writing. I wasn't writing as much as I want to. To me a writer is a solitary person most of the time, especially when they're working. What I discovered was that we'd have readings and these people would read the same thing every time because they weren't working...to me, a writer has to write. She said, Sometimes they would tell a great story at a writer's workshop, but in the telling they'd lose the creative interest in writing it. They were finished with it. The very worst thing about being a writer is the writing...and the very best thing about being a writer is the writing. It's tough but I couldn't live without it. Traxler got her degree in Literary Criticism from the University of California. I learned more reading books at ni ht The classes would g . inspire me to want to learn' more. Education has always been for me a jump off point. My best learning has been a result of taking a class that has inspired me. For example, when I studied Uamesj Joyce, we had to read Ulysses really fast. How can you read Ulysses fast? From there I read more about Joyce on my own...I just sort of saturated myself in Joyce. That's how I really learn. Everytime I'd take a classul really liked, I'd go to the library and try to find out as much as I could on my own. Like the mythic Glass Woman ofnher poems, Traxler shows herself to have many facets. by Brian David Phillips Patricia Traxler isn't well known on campus, but this outspoken writer has a lot to contribute. Photo by Cindy Wunder. ' Marcia MacLennan Janice Stanton Patricia Traxler English! 23