Born in Peoria, Illinois, I spent most of my growing up years in Carthage, a picturesque community of 3,000, located just 12 miles east of the mighty Mississippi. That river has never been far from my sight except for brief habitations in Florida, Rhode Island and Texas where salt water replaced the fresh, though muddy, river water.
My early years were spent on a farm, and formal schooling began in a one-room school in the middle of a farmer’s field, where it had stood for nearly a hundred years. From first through third grades, I thrived in a learning environment rich with the three R’s and natural science lessons just outside the door. I made my stage debut in a school Christmas program with a bed sheet strung over a wire to serve as the main curtain. It was sufficiently grand for me and may be the reason I have a knack for creating a theatre space just about anywhere. When that little school went away with consolidation, I rode the bus to town and was introduced to cafeteria lunches, band lessons and a real stage – it was Broadway to me! Soon after, my family left the farm and moved into town where I completed elementary and secondary school, fully involving myself in a myriad of music, dance and drama activities.
Involvement in community theatre and university theatre led to my first paid teaching and directing job in 1975. The play was LITTLE WOMEN and fueled my pursuit of anything having to do with its author. Louisa Mae Alcott. It also instilled a passion for creating historic characters and events, which has been a mainstay of my career along the Mighty Mississippi!
After completing graduate school in Acting at Western Illinois University, I headed to St. Louis where I appeared in numerous plays and musicals, taught classes in children’s theatre, and directed plays for high schools and summer youth companies. An opportunity to coordinate a 150th anniversary celebration enticed me back to my hometown and drew me into work as director of programming in an architectural museum. There I started a museum theatre program and, more importantly, met my husband Paul, a Minnesota transplant.
With son Griffin (Open ’09), we followed the Mississippi back to Paul’s neck of the woods in 1995. Since then, I’ve spent a good deal of time working with the Minnesota Historical Society and Historic Murphy’s Landing creating characters, lessons, and plays based on history. I have also had the pleasure of working with several community and children’s theatres. Though my career has been somewhat varied, a colleague observed it seems to have remained focused on four themes -- theatre, music, history, and education. Teaching allows me to embrace all of them so I enrolled in Hamline University’s post-baccalaureate program during the Millennium year and am ecstatic to have the privilege of teaching in an urban public school.
Free time finds me reading, traveling, visiting grandchildren (six – all girls), and, yes, going to plays as often as I can afford. I hope someday to tread the boards again, probably taking little old lady roles! In the meantime directing and teaching theatre at Open School is a dream come true and I look forward to continued growth as a theatre artist with the creative and imaginative Open School youth as inspiration.
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