Monday, December 9,1968
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
3
Thomas R. Long to direct KU play
By CANDACE OSBORNE
Kansan Staff Writer
The director of the next University of Kansas theatre production, "A Delicate Balance," has directed such professionals as Vivian Blaine and Peter Palmer, the original Little Abner on Broadway.
He likes to mix educational and professional theatre because of the value he feels it has for the student.
Professionalism, Thomas R. Long says, is an attitude. "There are many professionals here. Both professionals and nonprofessionals can be found in almost any production, from Broadway to the community playhouse."
Long's professional experience began in 1948, the summer before his junior year at the University of Oklahoma, when he hitchhiked to Tennessee with $10 in his pocket. His search for a summer job ended at the Nashville Playhouse. He acted there and managed the stage—often sleeping on it—in whatever cot or bed happened to be around as a prop.
Now married with two children, Long spends his summers in Eagles Mere, Pa., at the professional summer playhouse he has directed and co-produced since 1965.
Again seeking his own special blend of education and theatre, Long earned his doctorate from Michigan State University in 1966.
As visiting associate professor of speech and dram at KU this year, he teaches voice diction, acting techniques and directing. Next semester he will add a course in American drama and theatre since 1895.
The true actor, he says, loses his self-identity in whatever role he plays. "It disappoints audiences for actors to be themselves instead of blending into the play," he said. "An actor can make the transition; a Hollywood-brand performer cannot."
Long has known both actors and performers. As a character actor of stage and motion pictures in the early '50's, he appeared in films with Tony Curtis, Piper Laurie, Spring Byington, Don Defore, Jeff Chandler and Sidney Poitier. Two of his movie credits are "No Room for the Groom," recently aired on television, and "Red Ball Express."
Other professional credits include touring with Tennessee Williams "The Glass Menagerie" with Maxwell Anderson's "Joan of Lorraine" which featured Diana Barrymore, daughter of the famous John Barrymore.
He found each production exciting and quotes the well-known director Peter Brook to explain why: "You can wipe the slate clean with each new production, begin anew with each show, do what you can't in life—start all over."
Just as he considers each play a learning experience, Long stresses the "entirely new and
Visiting professor
Thomas R. Long (left), visiting professor at the University of Kansas, discusses Edward Albee's Pulitzer Prize-winning play "A Delicate Balance" with two student cast members, Eugene Casassa, Lawrence graduate student, and Cherie Shuck, Atchison junior. He is director of the play to be given Dec. 10-13 and 15.
exeiting" nature of directing his first play at KU, Edward Albee's 1967 Pulitzer Prize winner, "A Delicate Balance," which opened on Broadway in September 1966. It will run Dec. 10 to 13 and 15. He will also direct "The Imaginary Invalid" by Moliere in March.
Calling talent in KU's theatre department "bright and stimulating." Long said the group is enjoying rehearsals, "discussing the play on Albee's terms and on our own terms. We're discovering a lot about ourselves, and that's what theatre's all about."
Albee's contemporary play speaks to everyone, according to the director, but has a special meaning for young people. "It
concerns the responsibilities each of us has to his friends," Long said, and forces the question, "How good a friend am I?"
Wescoe aide wins district post
James E. Gunn, the administrative assistant to the Chancellor for University Relations at KU, was elected district chairman at the American College Public Relations Association's Mid-America district conference last week in Colorado Springs, Colorado.
Gunn will succeed Mrs. Ruth Prescott of Grinnell College.
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