The Path to my PhD in Theatre – Northwestern 1958-1959

I don’t see this much as a story. What I did was, after I got my master’s degree, I immediately took courses in stage costuming and acting so that I would get my PhD in theater. The first two summers I only worked at the high school, but during the next three summers, I took classes Northwestern Summer Theater. I took courses in lighting and building scenery and making costumes and other help backstage like helping the actors with quick changes. This was especially fun when the donned authentic period costumes had laced up bodices, we’d have to cut the laces to get them out of their costume and into another fast enough to make the actor’s next scene. It was quite exciting!

Dr. Paul Reinhardt served the University of Texas at Austin for 28 years as a professor and student advisor in the Department of Theatre and Dance, during which time he also served as head of the department’s costume design program, supervisor of the costume construction shop and curator of the historical clothing collection.

The Bible of Stage Costuming by Lucy Barton. She trained Paul Reinhardt, and Paul Reinhardt was the head of costuming for Northwestern Repertory Theatre. I got my class credits under Paul Reinhardt and took a summer course under Lucy Barton.

He received his Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Tulsa, a Master of Fine Arts degree in Theatre History and Costume from The University of Texas at Austin, and his Doctorate in Theatre History from the University of Iowa. Dr. Reinhardt was a student of Lucy Barton and B. Iden Payne, and was a colleague of many theatre luminaries, including Oscar Brockett, Angus Bowmer, Douglas Russell, and Alvina Krause. He was one of the leading authorities on the history of clothing and design, with many published articles and countless public lectures on costume history, costume design, period movement for actors, and the history of “blue jeans” (his specialty) to his credit. This exhibit is curated by Beth Kerr, Theatre, Dance, and Music Liaison Librarian.

University of Texas Libraries

In addition to his work at the University of Texas at Austin, Dr. Reinhardt’s academic credits as professor and designer included Richmond Professional Institute, Northwestern University, the University of Iowa, California State University at Fullerton, the University of Oregon, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, James Madison University, and Western Michigan University.

Dr. Reinhardt’s professional design credits included Oregon Shakespeare Festival, the Northwestern Repertory Theatre, the Scott Actor’s Repertory in Fort Worth, Texas, the Pacific Conservatory of the Performing Arts in Santa Maria, California, and ten years as principal designer at the Texas Shakespeare Festival.

University of Texas at Austin Theatre of Dance

I guess I have to mention and state why I did not go down the rabbit hole of stage costuming. I just didn’t want to get stuck sewing and I was not going to get a PhD because that meant that I had to take statistics, and I was not an artist. I was not going to be a costume designer. I was a good workman/seamstress and I didn’t want that. I didn’t want to write a dissertation, I wanted to put on theater.

Winter quarter of my masters degree 1956, that’s the same winter that I went to see Maria Callas. The same quarter I did my Master’s Recital. I also took a course called “Teaching Speech in the Secondary School” taught by Carl Robinson. Part of the course was a project. I chose to construct a college speech & drama department from the ground up. Using his textbook,..converse.

I took the course that was the basis for converse in the winter of my master’s degree year, 1956. Then in Spring

In winter of 1955-56 I got introduced to the professional organization clled the Speech Association of America. This is the professional organization that has annual meetings of speech and drama people in colleges and high schools all over the United States. I became active in my professional organization for the next 20 years. I held offices in my Oral Interp unit and other units. I gave seminars and programs up into the 70s until I was teaching at Oak Hills High School. Oak Hills could care less that I held status in my professional organization. I wrote a 1 page report, which I know Oak Hills stuck in a drawer as proof that I went and otherwise ignored the rest. Adn so like in Ash Wednesday, my professional So unless I financed it myself, my professional work and life was at an end and I could not on a teacher’s salary finance flying around the united states, going to conferences, as much fun as it would be. And so, it ended, not as a bang but as a whimper.

Getting My First Job – Converse College – Spartanburg, SC

Getting my first job. In the spring, the SAA listed job openings for positions in different colleges and you’d send out letters and resumes for employment. I applied for a job listed at Skidmore with my resume and my project that I did with Carl Robinson. They selected me to fly to come meet with them about the position and interviewed with Dr. Morgan and got a chance to look at the facility. I found out that I would be creating a whole new speech department, just like I did in my Master’s Project. I’d have my theater and classes, but I had to pass mustar with the little ladies on the board. They had to make sure that I had the right lineage and held my teacup at the right angle. I passed mustard with the ladies and got the job. I thought how did I get so lucky! The job was the Chairman of the Speech and Drama Department and Assistant Professor, and my job was to create a brand new modern Speech department from the ground up, Voice articulation, Theater History and other courses.

That term paper and project was the perfect marriage of a term paper meeting an immediate need to modernized to the 1950s. I got hired mainly because of that and that I passed the “passing the teacup test”. Not only were the classes outdated, so was the stage equipment. So one of my major jobs was to update the stage equipment.

I called two major lighting companies and got appointments to speak with a sales rep and have them come visit my stage and survey my needs for a whole new lighting system. The first one on stage brought pictures, catalogs, and samples of their lighting equipment and we spent the entire afternoon, about 3 or 4 hours, designing an complete new lighting system for the entire backstage area down to the last lamp, lens, and plug including a quote. The other salesman showed me a few pieces of equipment with a more generalized quote on a couple of pamphlets, wined me and dined me with only a cursory look at the stage. Then he took me out to dinner and wined me and dined me and took me back home. Obviously I went with the more professional company decided on the more detailed quote with the salesman who treated me like a professional. When he came back the next morning I told him that I had decided on the other offer. Boy did he get MAD! He screamed and ranted and raved and stomped out of the theatre. That man in Spartanburg got the shock of his first interaction of the professional modern woman.

Converse-College-Speech-Department-Sylabus-not-incl-pg-10

Converse’s speech department had been under the chairmanship of Miss Hazel Abbott since 1927. Miss Abbott would accept a young lady and train her for 4 years in private declamation programs, just like a voice student in singing. Declamation is an artistic form of public speaking. It is a dramatic oration designed to express through articulation, emphasis and gesture the full sense of the text being conveyed. That format was so out of date. She retired in 1956, so I was hired to modernize the department and create a department with different courses that anyone could take at any time. They could take different courses such as public speaking, voice and articulation, Oral interpretation of literature, acting, theater history, stagecraft and lighting, etc. I spent the fall semester creating 5 different courses including The Fundamentals of Public Speaking, Play Production, Oral Interpretation of Literature, History and Literature of the Theater, and Training of the Speaking Voice.

One funny thing that I remember is that when the girls would sign up for Voice & Articulation and Fundamentals, they would quip “I’m not going to let some Yankee try to get rid of my Southern accent.”

Students signed up for my class and I did not have a conventional classroom. The seats in the auditorium were my classroom for the year. Also, my meeting room for stage rehearsals and any other meetings, they told me it was my kingdom until one day in the spring, Dr. Morgan, the President, needed to have a special meeting. They had just gotten word that integration of Public Schools was going to be coming soon. The town elders panicked. They were going to have to create private white schools to separate their precious white children from the black students that would be coming into the Public Schools. That did not make me happy. it was one of the reasons I did not stay at that job for a second year.

Just below my stage was the dining room where all of the young ladies went to eat dinner. I worked very hard during the day teaching. Being lazy, I would just work until dinner time and just go downstairs to have a faculty dinner at a faculty table. We had prayer at the table before dinner and I remember having a special kind of soup that had okra in it. Oh! I hated that okra soup. Then I would go home to my new apartment, one room over top of a garage. Eventually I bought some furniture for my one room apartment. Most important was a hide-a-bed couch that opened up into a bed. To make the bed all you had to do was close the bed up into the couch. Or open it up at night and go to sleep on the bed part of the open couch. I was pretty much my own boss, being at school for classes in my classroom when I needed to be.

Discovering the fact that one person in the department was too small for what they wanted to do with the number of courses and the size of the department that they wanted to build. Because I had to teach 4 courses, which is the most you could teach. The student load that they wanted me to carry, they were expanding. so I convinced them to hire one more faculty member and they would stradle the speech department and the english department. In the meantime, I had to go through the first semester and that experience so that I could adapt my syllabus to Converse Real life . So I taught 4 courses in the first semester and had the girls in acting class do various scenes.

In the second semester, when Tad became part of the faculty. Tad taught 2 speech and drama classes and 2 English classes. Tad and I performed a faculty recital, a scene commonly called “The Gentleman Caller” from the glass menagerie by Tennessee Williams between Laura and Tad played Jim O’Connor, “The Gentleman Caller”.

our talk sessions with marion and paz. Paz was an opera singer who sang at the met and was hired by converse to be a voice teacher, and we’d talk about worldly things. She was not married but she let us know “life did not pass me by”, that was her discreet way of telling us that she had lovers and did not need to be married to have a full life.

I’m remembering in the fall and spring sitting on the patio outside of the NEW Music School with Marion and Paz.

We were out there many many afternoons talking intellectual talk. It was just glorious, glorious. My kind of thing. Tad would join us some, but he was more of a doer. He built sets and just did things theatrical. I remember him more like that. It was a wonderful time for those 9 months, but I left it without batting an eye after that incident after the school was trying to establish, starting their racist doctines so they could send their pure-white daughters to a school after brown vs education that said that black people could go to public schools and they would be integrated.

Race: one thing that happened when we moved to bridge rd, where mother slid down the driveway and came inches from going over the edge into the ravine…

in back of that house along the ridge, there was a cabin way back there. I went exploring up my little steps and along the ridge and there was a “cabin” I guess and there was a little balck girl my age and we would play together like kids. I was about 4 years old.

There is a book that I read that played out that same scenario, so I’m not sure if my memories are accurate

When I went to the Methodist church (age 12-18, 1942-1952) our youth program would one winter, we would go as a group to (religious education) where we would have reciprocal programs invite or go to different churches like Catholic and Jewish, reciprocal visits with the black church. It was a wonderful thing that our director of religious education created. Schools in Charleston were slowly getting integrated.

I was the one who put together all of the programs. Our religious director was a southerner and flaming liberal. I was an active participant of the Civil Rights Movement.

During this time I found out that my mother’s father was a member of the KKK (Norman Brown) and I inherited his robes. We go from there to his granddaughter was very active in the integration and Civil Rights movement. One of my favorite songs was lift every voice and sing, the Negro National Anthem.

It was the times. And my friend in back of my house.

Lift every voice and sing was the only song i could play well on the piano. Piano lessons from 8 to 9 years old and it was obvious that I was never going to be very good. Then when I was 12 I started playing chords and I learned to play by chords. I could play one finger and play chords, and gee! It sounds like I could play the play the piano. That’s how I learned to play the piano. Just like typing, I was not dexterous with my fingers, and would make many mistakes.

My mother granddaddy tried to control her and kept her out of school. Granddaddy had his boys that helped him out on the farm and he made the pronouncement that mother would stay home and help her mother raise her brothers. She raised Lee, Glen, Gladys.

How did Mother get away from being racist?

George Ferguson asked me one time why Bill would use the N word.

The Negro National Anthem

Lift every voice and sing
Till earth and heaven ring
Ring with the harmonies of Liberty
Let our rejoicing rise
High as the listening skies
Let it resound loud as the rolling sea

Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us
Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us
Facing the rising sun of our new day begun
Let us march on till victory is won

Stony the road we trod
Bitter the chastening rod
Felt in the days when hope unborn had died
Yet with a steady beat
Have not our weary feet
Come to the place for which our fathers sighed?

We have come over a way that with tears has been watered
We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered
Out from the gloomy past
Till now we stand at last
Where the white gleam of our bright star is cast

God of our weary years
God of our silent tears
Thou who has brought us thus far on the way
Thou who has by Thy might Led us into the light
Keep us forever in the path, we pray
Lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met Thee

Lest, our hearts drunk with the wine of the world, we forget Thee
Shadowed beneath Thy hand
May we forever stand
True to our God
True to our native land
Our native land

During this time (?) I was asked to sign a pledge that I would never drink, and I’m conducting my religious education. I can’t these kids to sign it because I wouldn’t. I drink…I’ve been drinking since I was 3 years old and I’m not going to stop.

The music school at Converse was world-renowned. …was a singer and everyone was so proud. Gian Carlo Menotti who wrote “Amahl and the Night Visitors” television opera was a graduate of Converse College. Later in life, Bill Giles..

I remember standing in the front of the auditorium and the class is lined up in the seats. I think I had one of those moveable black boards and that’s where I did my teaching. I remember my dining room experience and the okra soup.

It has turned out that Tad and Marion Converse College the foundation for 2 lifelong friends – Marion Holt & Fergus Gardner (aka ‘Tad’) Currie. I met Marion in 1956. Bill and I stayed with Marion in NYC, in a rent-controlled apartment on the 7th floor where he lived for almost 50 years. He was gay.

He was not the first gay man I ever met. At Marshall College one of the men there was gay and they were worried that he would make other guys gay just by being around him.

The new Department description has vestiges of old south, clawing toward the modern.

The job was posted and I had my interview in the spring of 1956, and got hired that spring to start in September. Tad got interviewed in the fall and got hired for the spring semester. Neither of us went back

John Keltner said “What are you doing down there in that podunk southern town making $3000?” I got hired in Kansas making $4000.

Tad left Converse after one semester for Columbia in New York to get his PhD . I suggested a replacement for Tad, who was going on to New York, and they turned him down because “he was from the wrong side of the track”. I told them, you’re no longer looking for one replacement, you’re looking for two.

I taught five courses each semester.

You have to be a designer. Paul was a designer, I was never an artist or designer. I could do all of the crafting, just not just the design. Just like interpreting, I wasn’t a writer, I was the interpreter.

I could have gone to the University of Wisconsin as their costume designer, but I would have been taking it as in intern for my PhD and I would have earned less than $2,500 for one year and I would have had to take courses. taken a job when I went to Skidmore in ’59. At Skidmore I would make $5,000 for much less work. The UW job was just not what I wanted.

At Skidmore, we did 4 plays, which I was responsible for designing and constructing the costumes, and teaching my courses, of course.

In the spring I worked with the Palmetto Players (the Converse College Theatre Group and directed Tennessee Williams Summer and Smoke. As a Girls college, we worked with Wallford College, a men’s college to fill the male parts.

Basically, the fall semester was spent building my courses and the spring semester was spent doing the plays and faculty recital.

I determined that the college needed more than one person. I worked with Dr. Morton and other administration, so I worked on hiring someone to work in English and Speech & Drama. Tad going to Columbia University, we had to look for a second person for the following fall. I found the best candidates but could not pass the “teacup” test. They rejected him. I found it very discouraging and I gave my notice and left converse at the end of may

I left converse to do a road trip, through durham and washington DC and over to philadelphia to visit with my Marshall roommate and Pittsburgh with Earl and Fred and their dalmation and that was fun. Then I drove home to Dayton. That’s when I got the final message from Dr. Morgan that they were not going to hire the candidate that I had selected and I threw a temper tantrum. I stayed home for maybe a week and then drove to

Northwestern to do my summer work and I was introduced to John Keltner. He was looking for someone to fill a position at Kansas State University. Karl Robinson offered to write me a recommendation and I declined but I got introduced to Keltner and all I would have to do is teach my courses and be costumer. Okay, I won’t have to do anything. I flew to Manhattan Kansas and met the powers that be and was offered the position and decided to take the job.

The salary at Converse for all of that work was $3,000 the first year. I was going to get a $200 raise. The salary at Kansas State was $4,000 for less work. So I called up Dr. Morgan and told him that I’d been offered another position for a 25% salary raise, so I am going to take that position and you are going to be looking for 2 faculty members.

So, for $4,000 I taught Oral Interpretation, Public Speaking, and two or three other courses.

A little interesting side story: When I went to SC, I said I was going to be extra careful and worked very hard to not lose my northern accent, as I had already had to lose my WV accent for the stage. So I went to Kansas and came home at thanksgiving and mother said, “oh my goodness!” You never got a southern accent when you went to to SC, but you have fallen right back into your WV accent from living in Kansas. So I lost the WV, gained the Great American, kept it when I went south, so when I went to Kansas I fell right back into my WV accent so I had to work again to get rid of that. I was in Kansas for two years before I went to New York and it was easy there to keep my theatre accent.

Wingspread was more managing a theater.