could knock people’s socks off, and that’s the kind of confidence you need to succeed.” Ravel was transforming Marquette’s theatre program to a performance-based curriculum when West came to campus, and the hands-on training of the next four years changed West’s approach to acting. West remembers Ravel’s teachable moments — insights that she uses to this day. In one meeting, Ravel pulled a pencil from her hair, used it to stir her coffee, then explained how what she was doing could define a character for the audience. Today, West uses similar quirks and gestures when portraying Alison Parker, a professor on MTV’s comedy Underemployed. “It seems random,” West says. “But it gives you some context for the character without having to be really obvious.”
brian
By Tim Cigelske
Brian Castner, Eng ’99, appeared unscathed after two tours in Iraq. All his wounds were on the inside.
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As the leader of an Air Force bomb squad, Castner was surrounded by the horror and tension of war. His subsequent struggle to resume everyday life eventually unleashed a frantic state of mind he calls “the Crazy.” Castner’s recently published book, The Long Walk: A Story of War and the Life That Follows, is his attempt to relay those experiences exactly as he felt them. “I don’t hold your hand for a lot of it,” he says. In the opening pages, Castner gives a raw description of the carnage caused by a car bomb. “That’s maybe a little shocking — and I have trouble almost seeing that it’s shocking,” Castner says. “It’s like, ‘Well, duh. What do you think happens?’” Castner graduated from Marquette’s ROTC program, became an Air Force engineer and passed a rigorous training program to join the bomb squad. After several close calls in Iraq, he made it home, only to develop an unshakeable sense of panic that nearly wrecked his family. Through a combination of therapy, running, yoga and writing — he calls telling his story a “biological need” — Castner eventually learned to manage his trauma. Today, he and his wife, Jessica (Spencer) Castner, Nurs ’99, live in Buffalo, N.Y., with their four sons. Castner works as a consultant and is writing another book but still recently found time to audit an Irish literature course at Canisius College — a sign, he says, of how much he misses the Jesuit approach to education. Castner’s favorite professor at Marquette, Dr. James Richie, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering, occasionally deviated from engineering to tell stories in class. Richie sometimes cited a book, Way of the Peaceful Warrior. “He found a copy that was being given away and brought it to me,” Richie says of Castner. “I still have that copy and think of him when I see it on my shelf.”
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By Chris Jenkins
Marquette Magazine
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