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University Daily Kansan Wednesday, May 24, 1961
Allen Crafton Retires After 38 Years
By William Mullins
The man who directed and worked to develop the University Theatre for 30 years will retire from the faculty this spring.
He is Allen Crafton, professor of speech, who came to KU in 1923 and was director of the University Theatre from that year until 1953. He was also director of the drama department from 1923 to 1956.
Prof. Crafton said he would probably do some writing and lecturing after retirement, but that he had made no definite plans.
Many of us won't be writers," he said. "We will get up and say something ten or twenty times as often as we write. We are asked to get up and speak at PTA meetings, at the Rotary Club, at luncheons and for introductions.
HE TEACHES both speech and drama courses, but says that he prefers acting to speech.
"Speech training helps a person get over stage fright and think on his feet while speaking."
PROF. CRAFTON said the thing he has enjoyed most about his work at KU is building up the University Theatre. He said the drama department had no stage when he first came to KU.
"I'm not good as an extemporaneous speaker," he said. "I've felt much more at home in acting, where I'm prepared to speak. I have a tendency to prefer the stage because of this."
Despite his preference for drama, Prof. Crafton considers speech a valuable for everyone.
"We used the Downtown Theater and the gymnasium," he said. "We would put up a temporary stage in the east end of the gymnasium and put on our plays there. Fraser Theater was the first theater we had. Hamlet was the first play we put on there."
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reviews were those by such playwrights as George Bernard Shaw and Shawn O'Casey.
"But I like all kinds," he said. "I like a low comedy, a melodrama, or a classical. We try to pick plays the audience will like."
Air Force ROTC Cadet David L. Nolting, Nortonville junior, will leave KU next month to join the Air Force Academy Class of 1965. Lt. Col. Robert P. Ash, professor of Air Science, said that Nolting is the first cadet of junior status from the local detachment to be selected for the Academy.
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Prof. Crafton has also written a number of books on the theater.
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"To together with Mrs. Crafton, I have written four or five theater textbooks," he said. "From 1927 to 1955 our texts were used by the University. And six years ago I wrote a history of Lawrence."
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SPEECH AND DRAMA were not viewed favorably when he first came to KU, Prof. Crafton said. He said the extra-curricular activities of the department were important in changing this unfavorable attitude.
"My father was connected with a theater troupe," he said. "As a kid I acted. In college I acted and when I got out of college, I helped establish a community theater in Galesburg, Ill."
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Faculty members and townspeople were given a chance to act and work in the plays of the University Theatre and this helped build up good will for the department.
"Because people became familiar with us through our plays, we could go to the administration and ask for a course in directing or acting and it was easier to get," he said.
Prof. Crafton said he became interested in theater work early in his life.
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