ENTERTAINMENT | TRAVEL SECTION
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Kalamazoo Gazette
Sunday, May 12, 2013
Stulberg contest: Semifinalists set to compete at Dalton Recital Hall. PAGE G2
Redefining theater K COLLEGE MARKS 50 YEARS OF GROUNDBREAKING STAGE PRODUCTIONSS BY MARK WEDEL FOR MLIVE.COM
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ALAMAZOO — It’s the 50th anniversary of the centerpiece of Kalamazoo College theatre, the Festival Playhouse. But K theatre as we know it today — “Theatre that is always thoughtful. Theatre that’s always provocative,” as its motto states — started to take shape 55 years ago. In 1958, Kalamazoo College professor Nelda K. Balch directed a play that few understood then, or understand today; Samuel Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot.” It was the first time the absurdist work was staged by a college theatre. Two vagrants wait for someone named Godot. As they wait, they discuss philosophy, swap hats, talk with odd characters and pass the time. But Godot never shows up. Just a few years before, the play had its Paris and London debuts, where it was met with walkouts and hoots from audiences. It then bombed at its first U.S. run in 1956. “At the time, it was this weird, unusual play. Now, it’s a modern classic,” said Ed Menta, K’s director of theater.
“ N o body dy understood t h a t p l ay, and most people ple hadn’t n heard of even it,” said Gail ffin, retired Griffin, K English and women’s men’s studies professor. fessor. time, K had no theater Att the time department. As common in most academic settings at the time, theater was just a part of speech and English departments. Balch worked to make theater its own department, with the most important step being the creation of Festival Playhouse in 1963-’64.
Thought-provoking plays
As if to re-emphasize her commitment to challenging work, she staged “Godot” again in 1964. “Nelda was such an incredible pioneer and such a professional in terms of insisting that the repertoire be first-rate, important drama, that the theater not be dumbed-down for college students or for audiences at a college,” Griffin said. “We owe it all to her for setting that standard. It’s been that way ever since.”
Above, “Waiting for Godot,” directed by Nelda K. Balch, for Kalamazoo College Festival Playhouse’s first season, 1964. In the production were Todd Beck, William Vincent, Walter Ash and Larry Fisher.
Although Griffin wasn’t on the theater faculty, she had participated producin Festival Playhouse produc tions and other theater activities since she arrived at K in 1977. She got to know Balch, who stayed active with the Playhouse into the mid-’80s. Balch died at the age of 94 in Florida in May, 2011. Balch often repeated to Griffin a “legendary” story, Griffin remembered. Sometime in the mid-’60s, in John Osborne’s “Look Back in Anger,” a student actress appeared on stage in a slip. “A full-length, full-coverage slip. And Nelda got called into the president’s office because he’d gotten calls about it,” Griffin said. “She refused to
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§ For a preview of Kalamazoo College’s “Into the Woods,” see G2.
At left, Nelda Balch, second from right, in a 1965 Faculty Readers Theatre production of “The Misanthrope.”
back down. She wouldn’t endanger the student or expose the student, but she was not going to back off.” This was K’s president Weimer Hicks (1954-1971), “a fairly conventional, conservative man. Great president, but definitely a man of the ’50s. And it was the ’60s, and things were happening in the theater that were not going to wait for him to catch up, or for audiences to catch up.” When the first nude scene happened at Festival Playhouse at the start of the ’90s, “I remember thinking, wow, if Weimer Hicks had been alive to see this!” Griffin said. When Balch started the Playhouse, productions were done at “the old classroom building,” Griffin said, Bowen Hall (built 1902, demolished 1969),
on the third floor. It was a makeshift theater with creaky floorboards and wooden chairs. They then got the use of the new Light Fine Arts Building, but Balch pushed for a separate Festival Playhouse theater. That opened in 1976, and is now the Nelda K. Balch Playhouse. Balch retired in 1981, but kept active at the Playhouse. The period after was a “rough transition” Griffin said. Then Menta arrived in 1986. “After Ed came, (Festival Playhouse) redefined theater for the 21st century for K,” she said.
Above, Karl Malden served as artistin-residence for Kalamazoo College’s theater department in 1970. From left, Robert Kingsley, Joel Jaffe, Margaret Crawford, Malden and Robert Schrag.
Festival Playhouse strives for thoughtful, provocative works BY MARK WEDEL FOR MLIVE.COM
KALAMAZOO — “The story of Festival Playhouse is very much the story of Nelda K. Balch,” said Ed Menta, director of theater, Kalamazoo College. But Menta has worked on the Playhouse’s story since 1986, and continues Balch’s drive toward bringing challenging work to K’s campus and community. “Always, again, the aim was to create distinctive theater. That’s why we say, theater that is always thoughtful, theatre that’s always provocative,” he said. “Provocative” isn’t just a buzz-word. Occasionally, what happens on the college’s stage literally provokes. At a Festival Playhouse Diversity Guest Artist series event in September last year, students stormed the stage after a politically charged spoken word performance on U.S.-Mexico relations by Guillermo Gomez-Pena. “His performance was this radical, galvanizing event for the entire campus,” Menta said.
“Some of our Latino students, Chicano students specifically, actually took over the stage after his performance and demanded an ethnic, Chicano studies program. That initiated the conversation on our campus.” Menta pointed out the Playhouse’s continuing effort to stage new, and new-to-the-area, theater. Just as Balch staged “Waiting for Godot” for its first college run, Menta brought Sarah Ruhl’s “In the Next Room, (or The Vibrator Play)” to the stage for the first time in Michigan early this year. The Playhouse also was first with “Well” by K alum Lisa Kron. It went onto Broadway in 2006, where it was nominated for a Tony. Holly Hughes, another alum, also has brought her performance art back to K. Menta has done special projects like “Kahani,” in 2012, first bringing guest director Irfana Majumdar from India to K, then taking the production to India as part of K’s study abroad experience. In 2008, Nobel Prize laureate Wole Soyinka came to K from Nigeria to see his
“Death and the King’s Horseman” at the Playhouse. “We like to think that those kinds of special projects make us distinct not only for our campus community but for the entire Kalamazoo community.” He also has involved nontheater faculty in Playhouse projects, such as in “Stuff Happens.” In the 2011 production that explored the build-up to the Iraq War, Menta had political science professors discussing the issues with the cast. Retired faculty member Gail Griffin said of Menta, “He’s worked really hard to make theater a living part of the campus community, rather than a floating island off in the distance, which theater can be.” “In another 20 years, people are going to look back at the Ed Menta era as remarkable, second only to the Nelda Balch era. He’s been there so long, and he’s been so brave, he’s done so many things that I would have thought impossible,” Griffin said. The Playhouse is at a point where it can stage big musicals
such as “Into the Woods” as well as “experimental stuff that (Menta) knew nobody was going to like — he knew that three people in the audience were going to like it,” she said. “But that’s like Nelda doing ‘Godot.’ This is what theater’s doing, and we’re educational theater, and our students, staff and the community need to know about it,” she said. Events So-Far Set for Kalamazoo College Festival Playhouse 50th year: § May 19: Kick-Off to the 50th Anniversary Season: “Into the Woods.” § Sept. 21: “The Dog and Pony Show,” comedic one-person show about lesbians and their dogs by Kalamazoo alum Holly Hughes. § Oct. 19: Evening of Theatre and Alumni Scenes, with alumni going back to the original cast of K’s 1958 “Waiting for Godot.” § Nov. 7: Re-Opening of the Nelda K. Balch Playhouse, to show off re-upholstered seats, the final improvement in 10 years of renovations.
MARK WEDEL | MLIVE.COM
Kalamazoo College Festival Playhouse faculty, staff and students pause during construction of “Into the Woods” set. Pictured from left are, Laura Livingstone-McNelis (oncall coordinator), Phoebe Solomon (theatre arts senior), Jon Reeves (director of technical theatre), Karen Berthel (chair of theatre arts), Ed Menta, (director of theatre), Elaine Kauffman (costumer). Not pictured: Lanford J. Potts (design).
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