For now over 75 years, The Baylor Line has been publishing vivid storytelling from across the Baylor Family. I don’t think our archives full of deep, inspirational features should live solely on shelves, so we are bringing them back to life in BL Classics. This April, 1976 Classic dives into Baylor Theater’s touring production of E. P. Conkle’s ‘Sparkin,” as student actors and crew haul a full-sized set through Central Texas towns, rain or shine. From lightning-fast set builds in gym bleachers to candid moments with curious young audiences, this piece captures the heart and hustle behind educational outreach theater.
The sky was growing darker over the Central Texas town of Bartlett as Bill Cook, professor of oral communication and director of the Baylor Theater, backed his pick-up and a good-sized trailer expertly between the supports of an awning connecting the school gym and the main building.
As the thunder rolled and the rains came down, the touring group of the Baylor Theater prepared to present their twenty-third performance of E. P. Conkle’s one-act play “Sparkin’.” Before the school year is over they will have performed at least 52 times in 49 schools before 10,000 to 12,000 students.
Some twenty-five high school students were already in the gym bleachers when the marvel of unloading and setting up began. The set is the real thing. It is no scaled-down model. Ceiling- high flats quickly became the walls of a country kitchen around the turn of the century. A hinged brown board became a full-sized cabinet into which George Odom (the sophomore drama major from Richardson who plays Orry Sparks) fitted the real kitchen sink. Suzy Hay, a graduate student from Abilene who is Susan Hanna in the play, unrolled a green-plaid curtain, gave it a flip and in two easy motions hung it at the kitchen window.
Bob Guthrie, Baylor Theater technical director who designed and built the set, rolled in a crate containing a cast-iron stove, lifted off one side of the crate and shoved the stove easily into place. “Where’s the door?” director Cook queried as Amy Neely (Lessie Hanna in the play and a sophomore drama major from Bolivar, Missouri) set up an ironing board and sadiron.
Performing Arts Consultant for Region XII Rex Allen slipped the door into place and set the knobs as Bill Cook dropped in the hinge pins. Everybody worked. No wasted action and no stampede. In twenty minutes a rural kitchen sat in the middle of the Bartlett School Gym.
“Thirty minutes to show time,” Allen warned. Peggy Cathcart, junior musical theater major from Dallas, smoothed the oilcloth on the kitchen table before running off with the other three cast members for costuming and make-up. She, as Granny Painsberry, would need extra make-up time. George Odom paused to lift the lid of the prop box marked “Orry.” He pointed to the two pairs of used sharp-toed shoes. “Two pair, you see, because Paul and I don’t wear the same size,” he explained.
Paul Duke plays Orry in the alternate cast. All performances of the touring play are on Monday and Tuesday, with one four-person cast performing on Monday and the other on Tuesday. The next week the two casts switch days so that students can balance out the days they miss MWF and TTh classes. Usually there are two performances each Monday and each Tuesday in towns not too far apart. Today the school at Academy, about ten miles up the road, would see the one o’clock performance.
The idea for a touring play was Bill Cook’s. He presented the idea at an area in-service meeting of Waco’s Region XII Education Service Center in the summer of 1974. The project was adopted and is financed jointly by Baylor and the service center. No charge is made to the schools or the students. Last year’s tour of Zona Gale’s one-act play “The Neighbors” was seen by about 9,000 students in 29 schools.
“The main idea,” Cook said over coffee in the principal’s office, “is to bring a live production to small towns where many people have never seen a play or any other type of theater before in their lives. The largest audience we’ve played to was 1600 in Temple, and the smallest was 60 at Pottsville, where we performed for the whole school — kindergarten through twelfth grade, plus the faculty.
“We may not recruit any students for Baylor or actually help Baylor,” he added, picking up his Stetson hat (it was time for the performance), “but there is more than one reason for Baylor’s being there.”
In the gym, the young principal leaned against the guard rail in front of the bleachers and casually announced to the 350 students, “You remember last year a group from the Baylor Theater came and presented a program? Well, they wanted to come again this year, and they’re going to do a play called ‘Sparkin’.’ ” That was the introduction.
“They wanted to come,” he said. Did they really want to get up at 5:30 or 6:00 in the morning? Slosh through a Central Texas downpour? Heave flats and props around? Endure the youthful audience response — from exaggerated giggling to austere silence on some occasions?
“This is the first time we didn’t get applause right at the end,” Peggy Cathcart said after the performance, eyes wide behind the white-tipped Granny Painsberry eye lashes. “But in another town they struck matches and threw them at us!”
They wanted to come?
“The best times are when a speech teacher invites us to a class and the students ask all kinds of questions. We love to talk with them and help them understand more about the theater,” she continued. Most of the time, especially after the second performance of the day, there is time for questions and answers at the end of the show.
“We come, too,” said Amy Neely, “because we want to show the students — many for the first time — the enjoyment they can get from a play. Some of them think all plays are long Shakespearian productions.”
Girls whose P.E. class would begin after the dismantling of the set were watching the kitchen disappear. Several high school boys volunteered to help load the trailer.
“That boy and girl who kissed each other (in the play) … do they go together?” Brenda turned from the rail to ask. It had been so real — staged in another era and only twenty-five ephemeral minutes long — but real. Something for her needed to transcend the imaginary world of the performance. And Debra asked to carry out the make-up box. Small, but meaningful, incidents.
The cast smiled, each grabbed a prop, waved and walked out. No doubt about it. They wanted to come.
Fifty-five students had auditioned for the eight available parts. They knew being in the touring play would be a demanding experience. But most agree with Rex Allen, who graduated from Baylor with a master’s degree in theater in 1974, that the tour is fine educational theater experience on a very practical level.
