Copyright © 2009-2020
North Manchester
Historical Society
All rights reserved.
Please contact
our Center for History
if you find
inaccuracies or
inappropriate content.
|
Source: NMHS Newsletter Aug 1995
My Blessing
By Allen Willmert
Sadie Irene Stutsman Wampler was committed to teaching
students more than course content and to undertaking
sometimes elaborate dramatic productions, both at
Manchester College and in the North Manchester
community, primarily in her church, the Walnut Street
Church of the Brethren. The two foci were integrally
related, for every classroom lecture was a demonstration
of stage presence and the persuasive power of the human
voice, and every drama was chosen and directed with the
intent of molding character in her students, and of
teaching the power of controlled human emotions to
effect change in one's view of life and its meaning. For
forty-seven years, from 1905 to 1952, this remarkable
woman challenged, guided and shaped the lives of
hundreds ofstudents--some of them without their
perceiving it until they had bumped against life beyond
the classroom or stage.
The character and personality of Sadie might be
described as a model of virtuous paradoxes. She was at
once a fearless free spirit but an unwavering follower
of The Faith. Creative and perceptively innovative
herself, she was careful to encourage creativity in her
students. Though demanding as a professor and director,
she was herself a tireless teacher and worker. She
preached the James-Lange theory of emotions to students
and cast members, but dismissed psychoanalysts as
presumptuous and self-deceptive, if not
self-serving--and this decades before the recent women's
movement against male-dominated psychological and social
theory. In verbal exchange, she could be forceful but
fraternal, caustic but kind--and she could speak volumes
with silence. She was often uncompromisingly blunt in
expressing her feelings or in stating her opinion, but
she never made an enemy.
Sadie applied her talents in art, music, oral reading
and drama with boundless energy, undaunted determination
and unquestioned commitment of time to every challenge
for which she accepted responsibility. In his 1963
eulogy, Vernon F. Schwalm, then president of Manchester
College, used these phrases: tall and strong; great and
successful teacher; dedicated loyalty and devotion;
woman of driving purposes and tremendous will power;
unafraid of hard work and mammoth undertakings. Contrast
these accolades with Sadie's own self-effacing workds in
a sketch she supplied at Dr. Schwalm's request shortly
after her retirement:
"I assure you I feel very unworthy of any special honor
from the Church. 'Tis little enough I've ever been worth
to the College. But it is because of my close
connections with both that I have been especially
blessed. . ." While undoubtedly an accomplished and
productive person, she was not lacking in humility.
Sadie always considered herself a teacher first and
foremost. It is ironic, therefore, that she is more
often remembered for her dramatic productions than for
her performance in class. But it is also understandable,
for many more persons experienced the plays and pageants
than enrolled in her courses. It is probably correct
that her major plays drew eighty per cent or more of the
campus community for the quarter-century from 1920 to
1945. Sadie was aware of this and considered even the
dramas and pageants as teaching activities, not just for
those majoring in her fields of Expression, and English
Literature, but for all who might be moved by the
wisdom, truth, or principle almost always present in the
plays she selected. As early Greek dramatists and
Shakespeare often used the great themes of love and
hate, glory and decay, truth and calumny, injustice and
revenge, justice and peace, many modern playwrights also
address these universal experiences of humankind.
Sadie never chose badly written plays for production;
whether comedy, tragedy, or a serious mixture of the
two, the play had to have a well-motivated plot,
believable development, dramatic incident, and--if
possible--a useful lesson to be learned. Why? Because
she felt compelled to educate the audience by
demonstrating good drama, effective speech, dramatic
communication, and often--by pressing home a moral or
ethical point--encouraging a weak faith, or declaring a
spiritual truth. To these ends, Sadie read hundreds of
plays, old and new, and kept a file of those that might
be considered for production. For each drama that met
her standards and approval, she recorded the
bibliographic data, cost and royalty, theme, plot
sketch, and requirements for casting and stage
management.
In a twelve-week quarter, Sadie's "Play Production"
students were required to read fifty plays and start
similar files for themselves. In addition, each had to
attend six plays produced by area high schools and write
a detailed critique of each production. Along with
Dolman's textbook on play production and a bibliography
of other readings these course requirements assured a
relatively small class enrollment but also enabled
greater personal contact for each student with a master
teacher and experienced drama director.
A brief scan of the course requirements for Sadie's
class "Shakespeare's Tragedies" in the winter quarter of
1932-33, will show one that she would be considered an
impossibly demanding professor by most of today's
students--and not a few of today's professors. Ninety
per cent of the final examination for Sadie's spring
quarter course in "Literary Interpretation" in1951
required the student to write out answers of varying
length. She wanted the students to demonstrate to her
what they had learned in her class.
One bit of foreshadowing of Sadie's greatness as a
teacher of more than just subject matter may be gleaned
from her statement in the College Catalog for 1913-14
setting forth the purpose of the Expression and Oratory
Department:
"This department aims to give practical instruction in
Oral Reading, and (to) help the student interpret and
appreciate literature. The effort is made to correct the
faults in the every-day speech of the student as well as
to prepare him for speaking.
Personal instruction is given according to the needs of
the student. Instruction is given in the proper use of
the voice, the body, the position of the arms, the feet,
and facial expression. He who speaks clearly and
pleasantly, quietly and calmly, is also learning to
think calmly and deliberately."
Dr. Lloyd M. Hoff's tribute to Sadie at her retirement
in 1952 attests her teaching via the direction and
production of dramas and pageants as well as in the
classroom:
Mrs. Wampler conducted not only great plays but good
plays. She had a philosophy of trying to aid in the
social adjustment of the student. The easiest thing for
a coach to do is select the most likely person to do the
thing that comes most naturally to him. But Mrs. Wampler
insisted that the shy student ought to play a dashing
part; or the over-bearing student ought to play a
reserved, submerged part. Sometimes an obscure,
off-campus student, little known by his classmates, was
given a chance to win recognition and laurels.
Mrs. Wampler was a perfectionist, to all intents and
purposes, yet she had that rare wisdom and grace to know
whan an actor was giving his best and to be willing to
accept his best without breaking his spirit, even though
his achievement might fall short of the goal she had
set.
However, good teaching for Sadie meant helping students
to emerge at a higher level than they entered. Delta
Dean (Doran) Schutz recalls one occasion in a class when
a young man had delivered a rather histrionic speech but
with quite acceptable content. When he was finished,
Sadie waited a few moments and then said very slowly:
"Very fine. Clap, clap, clap." But then she
constructively pointed out how he might give the same
speech without incurring the danger of being laughed off
the platform.
While Sadie had been teaching for seven years before the
first issue of OAK LEAVES was published as a number of
the MANCHESTER COLLEGE BULLETIN in the spring of 1913,
it is possible to see the gradual growth of her earliest
endeavors in interpretative reading--then called
elocution or expression--through news items in both of
these College publications. Sadie helped the early
growth of PHILOMATHEA, one of several literary and
philosophical societies, and was its sponsor during most
of its lifetime. She was also an advisor to the campus
Y.W.C.A. Both of these organizations held regular
meetings with programs for the edification and
entertainment of the members. Such programs afforded
opportunities for Sadie's expression students to give
readings outside the classroom.
Soon she was costuming some of them for more
entertaining presentations, and before long dramatic
readings moved into dramatic dialogues, and occasionally
pageantry, incorporating a little music and staging.
Brief plays were not far behind, and then she cajoled
some of the other faculty into producing a number of
full-length plays for the entertainment of the entire
student body, no doubt to show the students what might
be possible for their own future endeavors.
Sadie's expression majors were required, as a sort of
thesis before being graduated, to prepare a cutting of
an entire book and to present it before the entire
faculty, all of the expression students and some few
invited guests. It was to be a sixty-to-ninety-minute
program, each one scheduled on a different night and
presented in two parts with an intermission for which
the student also had to enlist entertainers to sing or
give readings which fit the theme of the main part of
the program. The programs, sometimes called recitals,
were somewhat similar to the senior recital for music
majors.
On April 7, 1922, the Civic and Oratorical League of
Manchester College, under the direction of Sadie,
presented the profoundly moving drama by Charles Rann
Kennedy, THE SERVANT IN THE HOUSE. That production
proved to be the first of four occasions when Sadie
would choose this play that eminently fulfilled her
ideal of great drama. It was given again by alumni on
May 31, 1924, with two performances, one in the
afternoon, and raised $200 toward the debt on The
College Chime. Nine years later the Play Production
class gave it at Commencement time; and in March 1947,
Tri Alpha presented it with David Waas in the title role
of Manson; Ed Butterbaugh, the Acting College President
in 1993-94, as Robert Smith, "a gentleman of necessary
occupation", and Gilbert Weldy as The Vicar.
The 1947 production of SERVANT IN THE HOUSE demonstrated
Sadie's astonishing resourcefulness. The College's old
gymnasium was not an ideal stage for drama except for
the spacious backstage area it afforded. The height of
the grand drape called for scenery flats sixteen feet
high, and voices tended to be trapped in the flies. When
Sadie wished not to paint the flats a dark color--which
would have been dificult to lighten again--but also
wished to have a set of dark wood paneling for the
rectory set in "Servant," she dyed brown many pieces of
a thin muslin, stitched them together, and directed the
crew to stretch this material over the flats and to
create a three-dimensional Gothic paneling effect using
crayons of a darker brown and purple. Hours of work were
required, but the effect was convincing and later
removal of the cloth was quite simple. Scores of times
this creative genius, Sadie Wampler, was able to make
something both appropriate and beautiful out of almost
nothing, whether sets or costumes or properties.
Already in 1922, Sadie outfitted the Choral Society of
80 persons in costumes designed for the cantata, RUTH,
The MOABITESS, by J. Astor Broad. Once having made
costumes for various productions, she would always
preserve them for possible future use. When she retired
there were more than a thousand costumes in the
Administration Building basement, from the mail room
west to the office of the History Department. In 1948,
the wardrobe racks were so crowded that nearly every
item selected needed immediate pressing to determine
whether it could be used. In addition to dresses, suits,
coats,hats and shoes, there were uniforms and
accessories of all kinds as well as props such as fans,
eyeglasses, canes, timepieces, etc. Unfortunately, the
want of any interested person to care for the
collections, together with the need for more office
space, led to their destruction some time after 1953.
One would hope that it was after Sadie's death, or that
she never knew about it.
It is impossible to do justice to Sadie's perceptions of
how best to bring the most dramatic effect out of spoken
lines or from movements on the stage. Her artist's sense
of form and balance not only aided her in creating sets,
but to block action so that set, furnishings and players
always presented a pleasing arrangement. A photograph
taken at almost any point during a play would show the
same kind of interest and balance that a painting should
have.
And her studied command of the capabilities of the human
voice and of its effectiveness in adding depth of
emotion and meaning to the spoken lines enabled her to
draw superior performances from average students. She
could accept and discuss a player's disagreement with
her advice, but she was usually right and usually able
to convince the other person. She often planned two
performances with total or partial double-casting. This
was undoubtedly extra work for her, for it meant twice
as many rehearsals in many cases; but it enabled more
students to play a part and learn from the experience.
It also had the very practical potential of providing
back-up performers in case of sickness.
At one time in its history, her Church of the Brethren
forbade musical instruments of any kind in the sanctuary
and only gradually accepted the piano as a helpful tool
in worship. In one of her productions, Sadie wanted very
much to have Lloyd Hoff play the violin for an
especially moving effect but was refused permission to
bring the instrument in. So she quietly arranged for Dr.
Hoff to stand in the hall outside the balcony seating so
that the soft strains of the violin might come through
the open doorway.
When David Waas played Manson in "Servant," Mary Emma
(Miller) Coe played an Anglican rector's young niece. In
one scene, Sadie wanted her to jump up and perch on the
piano, but there was a problem of immodesty which made
it unacceptable. Nevertheless, Sadie still wished to
have that bit of exuberant action. Finally, Mary Emma
suggested that she could wear slacks in that scene. Now,
even at that late date slacks and shorts on young ladies
were not acceptable to many Brethren except in physical
education classes. Sadie demurred, but only briefly
before deciding to allow the slacks in the scene.
These two occasions illustrate a tension that Sadie must
have felt often between loyalty to her Church and
devotion to grace and beauty in producing drama that had
the potential of helping to transform society by
inspiring individuals. On other matters, such as use of
profanity and the evils of smoking drinking, and
infidelity, Sadie was unequivocal and sometimes
dogmatic. She always eliminated profanity from the
scripts. She felt thatin real life it merely
demonstrated a paucity of vocabulary and was certainly
unnecessary in most cases to the essential progress of a
play. Only occasionally would she allow an isolated
instance of gutter language when it seemed important to
full characterization. Her sense was that the audience
was smart enough to hear it once and understand the
proper recognition of the part without having their ears
and souls bombarded with language they abhored. Once in
the late 1940's, the Fort Wayne Civic Theatre was
contracted to bring an entire production of BLYTHE
SPIRIT for a performance on campus. After the first
scene, which had had too much profanity for Sadie to
take, she either went backstage herself, or more likely
sent someone back, to demand that the rest of the
performance be purged of it--and it was!
The Tri Alpha (Drama) club room in the last years of
Sadie's reign was directly under the large room of the
College business office and was painted black, both
walls and ceiling. The east end of the room was used as
a small stage. It was here that initiates were brought
into membership. One person recalls that when he entered
at the appointed time, the unlighted room, but for a dim
pink bulb in one corner, seemed nearly filled with
figures milling around, dark hoods over their heads like
mummers, chanting slowly: "The play's the thing, the
play's the thing, the play's the thing..." "I was quite
aware," he said, "when a stooping figure with a deep
throaty voice uttered the words not a foot from my ear,
that I was in the presence of Sadie Wampler. Only later
did I realize that I had been in the presence of
greatness."
|
|