It’s a rainy April afternoon and I’m sitting in Goodwin Performing Arts Center at Waynesburg University, catching the last few minutes of a “duet acting scene” from Neil Simon’s classic “Barefoot in the Park”. The props are minimal – wooden benches and stools standing in for tables and couches.
The actors in training, freshmen Haley Pattison and Will Goslee, read dialog from their smart phones as they move through the comedic motions of newlyweds learning to live and love together. This is rehearsal; in a few days the dual performances of the entire class will be graded.
Instructor Edward Powers sits in the front row, illuminated by the stage lighting as he gestures his critique after the performance. He’s in his element now; drama coach, teacher and stage director, giving his students one last semester of instruction and advice before his own curtain call.
After 24 years and 100 plays, musicals, original scripts and one-man shows, Powers is retiring from the stage at WU to take on a new adventure or three, back in his hometown in Clarksville, Tennessee.
But today is all about the present as his voice pulls us into the moment that is so essential for actors to be in whenever they step onstage to tell a story that mirrors real life back to the audience.
“Don’t drop the character—keep living it on stage. That’s one of the toughest things to do as a listening actor—to be in the moment while waiting for the cue.”
Powers remembers his senior year at Austin Peay State University in 1978, doing an existential play where his character waited pages for his next line. “Our minds tend to wander, but you have to still maintain that character.” He tells us of the dramatic pace of that year that gave him his career. “I did five major shows plus about four one acts, and I directed as well. We were a factor, we were just tearing the place down.”
Graduate school at the University of Memphis found Powers in full command of “all kinds of accents”—proper Brit, Cockney Irish, German, Russian, American. “When I got there, people thought I was from Iowa or someplace like that. But I can get my Tennessee accent out at the drop of a hat!”
While teaching at Hiwasee College in Madisonville, Tennessee, the small historic liberal arts college began suffering financial difficulties and Powers began submitting his application to schools beyond his home state. He arrived on campus at Waynesburg College in 2000 and by that fall, his students were putting on the play “Rumors” by Neil Simon.
With a nod to time coming full circle, “This past fall we did “Rumors” again.”
Haley Pattison, from North Cambria, is majoring in Marine Biology. She tells me she found her love of aquatics going ocean fishing with her dad when she was 12 and marveling over crabs, corals and jellyfish. But her love for theater came in 11th grade when her school began offering drama classes. “I loved listening to musical sound tracks. Then my aunt took me to see a live performance, and it was Hamilton that did it. Once I’m hooked, I go for it!”
Powers is smiling. “This freshman class has some strong talent. I hate to leave them. It’s hard to say goodbye. There is a value to theater. With each story on stage, we are learning a little bit who we are. Whether maid or narrator, scarecrow, tin man or a cowardly lion, we’re dealing with the human condition.”
For Powers’s last spring musical, “Blood Brothers”, set in Liverpool in the 1960s, he let his students forgo accents in order to better focus on the emotional drama of two fraternal twin brothers raised at differing ends of the socio-economic spectrum and how it affects their lives when they fall in love with the same girl.
Powers nods in satisfaction. “It was an exceptional performance, especially since it was a musical, and they also had to concentrate on singing.”
Now, as the semester and the school year end, there are still acting exercises for his students to practice until they become second nature, things that nail down the finer details of bringing the stage persona to life. There will be a last rehearsal tomorrow for me to sit in on and observe.
As I settle in my seat the next afternoon, the rehearsal is finished, and the critique is ongoing. Haley, Goslee and fellow freshman Liz Dechellis from Pittsburgh are sitting on the edge of the stage, listening and asking questions. Powers is breaking down in measured terms how actors keep their place on stage while speaking each word.
What can be done between classes, he posits, what can be done between rehearsals, to fine tune a performance? Well, you might write some lines and decide where you’ll be standing onstage, rehearse in mind’s eye the movement along with the words, Powers tells them, each syllable clear enough to be heard to the last seat. “I move on this line—this way. I move on this line—that way. It might seem like a piddly little nothing but this is an important acting assignment.”
When I ask Dechellis, who played Mrs. Lyons in “Blood Brothers”, what theater does for her, she projects her voice from the stage as she explains that her love of singing led her to musicals, then acting. “We do a lot of these exercises and they help with the small details. I’ve learned a lot. It’s a life skill that helps me in the arts and also with my everyday life.”
For Goslee, who hails from Delaware, it’s a family affair. “My mom was an actress for a while, and I wanted to give it a try.”
Now it’s time to put away the props and strike a pose for the story. I tell them to create a scene and where everyone is in just the right pose, and one of the twenty photos I’ll shoot will capture it.
Powers gets into the act and we all laugh our way into the moment that will make the final cut when this story is published.