A LOT HAS CHANGED in the Emporia State University Summer Theatre since its first production in 1955. For the first four years, the summer company produced eight shows a season — the kind of schedule that is possible only for young actors and theater technicians who are capable of drinking gallons of coffee in a day and cat-napping on piles of old muslin.
After four years of all-nighters, cooler heads prevailed and the schedule was cut to six shows — still demanding, but not nearly as chaotic. Finally, after the master’s-degree program was shut down, reducing the number of theater students available in the summer, the schedule was trimmed to four shows, where it has remained since 1980.
The shows have also changed theaters. Summer Theatre began in Albert Taylor Hall. After King Hall was built, the shows moved into what is now the Karl Bruder Theatre, named for the man who started the summer program and was head of the speech and theater department for many years.
The people have changed, too. Every year, there is a new company. Some members carry over from year to year, but there are always new faces.
What has not changed is the program’s commitment to the craft of theater. For 55 seasons, ESU has been entertaining generations of Emporians and training actors and designers, stage, lighting and sound crews and directors to professional standards. Many of those people went on to work in professional theater from New York to California and in Europe, or to teach in colleges and high schools around the nation. Wherever they have gone, they have carried the word about ESU and its theater program.
Friday was a special day for the ESU Summer Theatre. In observance of the 55th season, the alumni association staged a theater reunion, which drew alumni from the full span of the summer program. Holding the place of honor at the gathering was Charles Hill, who played the lead in the Summer Theatre’s first production, “Harvey,” and taught in the department for many years.
Friday night, the cast of this season’s first show, “Beau Jest,” must have felt they were being watched over by the ghosts of seasons past. They were. The people in the audience represented the full history of summer theater in Emporia.
The actors had no need to be nervous. They could not have asked for a more enthusiastic and sympathetic audience. After all, the 2009 company is the next chapter in the story of the ESU Summer Theatre.
The audiences are as much a part of summer theater as the theater company and it is not too late to become part of this happy story.
The 1955 production of “Harvey” has long since closed and even “Beau Jest” is history. But “Suds,” a nostalgic musical comedy, opens June 24.
Get a ticket and join the tradition.
Patrick S. Kelley
Editorial Page Editor