O
ver the course of its 125 seasons, Periwig and the students who are its lifeblood have benefited from the many talented faculty members and advisers who have dedicated themselves to making sure that the show not only goes on, but that the young performers bring the house down every night, too. Still, one person stands alone for sheer longevity and devotion to the students of Periwig, giving nearly sixty years of her
life to the program: Jean Stephens H’50 ’59 ’61 ’64 ’68 ’89 P’78 GP’06. “She was in two or three plays a year when I was growing up,” says Betsy Stephens Ellsworth H’70,
Jean’s daughter who lived with her parents in Hamill House, where her father, Wade C. Stephens ’50
ALL HER WORLD WAS A
H’68 P’78 GP’06, was housemaster. “We never ate dinner as a family because Mom was always over at Kirby Arts Center.” Jean Stephens began working with drama students as an acting and elocution coach almost from the time the Stephens family took
STAGE
up residence in Hamill in 1957. She had honed her own acting chops in Ogunquit, Maine, and with the Lake Placid (N.Y.) Community Theatre
Whether as a voice
Players, and she sought to remain active in the arts after arriving at Lawrenceville. Jean quickly
coach or an actor,
befriended Peter Candler H’67’76, director of the theater, and James E. Blake ’43, who served
Jean Stephens’
as an adviser to Periwig and, before long, had claimed her place at the School. “You have this all-male, hyper-male boarding
time with Periwig
school, and then you’ve got this young woman who shows up and just doesn’t leave for what,
spanned nearly
fifty-seven years?” Ellsworth says. “It really was her home. When Dad died [in 1988], she moved
half its history.
off campus but she really carved out a place there. She spent every waking moment at KAC.” Whether actually portraying parts on the Periwig stage, or making sure students were getting the most of their own vocal abilities, it was a role Stephens would play almost until her death in 2015. In some instances, her involvement with Periwig became a family affair. “Her involvement ranged from being in the shows to being a diction coach for students,” says David Stephens ’78, who shared the stage
Above: An adviser to Periwig for nearly sixty years, Jean Stephens H’50 ’59 ’61 ’64 ’68 ’89 P’78 GP’06 also answered the call to play important parts in its stage productions, such as in The Man Who Came to Dinner in 1980.
with his mother in the 1976 production The Devil’s Disciple. “I was typecast as her idiot son,” he says, chuckling at the recollection, adding that sometimes, Jean Stephens’ stage direction accompanied them back to Hamill House. Sure a benefit to an eager young performer, no? “At the time, I didn’t consider it bonus direction,” David Stephens said of his mother’s reminders to enunciate. “But she was at every rehearsal and at all the performances, just deeply involved in it. She had an office in KAC, and she was going in every day up until the fall of the [school] year that she passed away.” Jean Stephens’ desire to be around the stage and the performers who brought it to life were easy to understand, Ellsworth says. “She just loved to act; she was theatrical in every moment of her being of life,” Ellsworth says. ‘She’d sit and talk with my husband, Scott, and suddenly she’d have an Oklahoman accent. Two minutes later, she would shift to her British accent or her North Carolina accent. You know, she was … I mean, for her, life really was a stage. And she lived that way.”
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