Sage of Emporia performance program

Fri & Sat

APR 17 & 18 7:30 pm

The Sage of Emporia: Based on the Autobiography of William Allen White

By Henry C. Haskell

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This event is sponsored, in part, by the Lied Performance Fund.

Please be mindful of the following in the auditorium: • Please silence cellular phones and electronic devices • No food or drink • No cameras or recording devices

Sponsored by

April 17 & 18, 2015

There will be no intermission.

CAST William Allen White……….Jack B. Wright Production Stage Manager…......Judy Locy Wright

SETTING The living room of the White’s home in Emporia, Kansas, toward noon of a mid-February day in 1942 Original Production in 1981, by the University of Kansas Theatre Ronald A. Willis, Director Delbert Unruh, Set and Lighting Design Chez Haehl, Costumes Beth Reiff, Production Stage Manager THIS PRODUCTION IS DEDICATED TO THE MEMORY OF RONALD A. WILLIS.

DIRECTOR’S NOTES To be a Kansan, either by birth or adoption, is to owe a debt to William Allen White.

He put Kansas on the map of the nation’s consciousness and did so with dignity and humor. Henry C. Haskell, able to speak with the voices of both the journalist and the playwright, has captured much of the indomitable Kansan’s spirit. We also welcome the spirit of William Allen White and hope that this depiction on stage remains faithful to the ideals and passions he so boldly set forth during his Kansas years.

Ronald A. Willis (1983)

ABOUT THE PLAYWRIGHT Henry C. Haskell, the author of The Sage of Emporia spent his life working in journalism, spending nearly 40 years as a newsman with the Kansas City Star.

Although he never worked for The Emporia Gazette, Haskell was a lifetime friend of the White family.

“Mr. White worked for the Star as did my father and although he left the year before my father started, I can remember visiting back and forth—in Emporia and in Estes Park—and my father spoke at William Allen White’s funeral,” Haskell once said. “I was a classmate of Bill White’s at Harvard and we remained good friends though the years.”

The Sage of Emporia Haskell began his career in the newspaper business as an apprentice at The Kansas City Star during the summers of 1920-23, while a college student. Following his graduation, he worked as a correspondent in France and returned to the United States in 1925 to take a job as a reporter for The Wichita Beacon. After a few years with The Baltimore Evening Sun, Haskell joined the news staff for The Kansas City Star, a post he kept until his retirement in 1968. An accomplished playwright, Haskell wrote a number of plays which have been produced at KU, by the Missouri Repertory Theatre and in California.

Haskell and Michael Berbiglia were instrumental in the founding of the Lyric Theater.

Haskell also served on the boards of the UMKC Conservatory of Music, the Kansas City Art Institute, the Philharmonic, and the United Fund. In 1969 he was appointed to the board of the National Council of the Humanities by President Lyndon Johnson.

Haskell died in 1981.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Special thanks always to the White Family, especially Mrs. Katherine K. White, and Barbara White Walker

JACK WRIGHT Jack Wright, retired professor of theatre and film, has held the titles of Artistic Director of Theatre at KU from 1976 to 1994, and Director of the University Theatre at KU from 1989 to 1994. He is now Professor Emeritus. He received his undergraduate degree in theatre from Otterbein College in Ohio and his Master of Arts and Ph.D. from KU. In 1979 he received the Otterbein College Distinguished Alumni Award. Prior to joining the KU faculty, he served on the theatre faculties at the University of Texas at Austin and at the University of Oklahoma at Norman. He holds several Teaching Awards from KU. Wright became a Fellow of the College of Fellows of the American Theatre in 1998, and is a member and Past President of the National Theatre Conference.

AFTERWORD William Allen White died in Emporia on January 29, 1944, a victim of cancer, only days prior to his seventy-sixth birthday. Messages of condolence came to the family from all over the United States and throughout the English-speaking world.

Hundreds of newspapers and magazines paid their tribute.

President Roosevelt said of him, “He made The Emporia Gazette a national institution.

As a writer of terse, forcible, and vigorous prose, he was unsurpassed. He ennobled the profession of journalism which he served with such unselfish devotion through the more than two score years.”

Harold Laski wrote from London, “White seemed to me to be part of that America of which the supreme representatives were Jefferson and Lincoln; the America which is concerned first of all with the ordinary people and their lot in life; the American which is simple, kindly, and proud to think that a humble man can there become a significant man.”

Sunday

Elling Swings Sinatra A celebration of Frank Sinatra’s 100th birthday

Kurt Elling Grammy Award winner

“The standout male vocalist of our time.”

— The New York Times

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APR 19 7:30 pm

Saturday

APR 25 7:30 pm

Pilobolus Dance Theater Singular style of modern dance

As seen on Oprah, Late Night with Conan O’Brien and the Academy Awards

lied.ku.edu | 785-864-2787

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SPRING 2015

APRIL 19 Elling Swings Sinatra

25

Pilobolus Dance Theater

MAY Ugly Duckling & 19 The The Tortoise and the Hare

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