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From ‘skeet, scat, skiddly-doo’ to directing Illinois Shakes, Stark retires from ISU theater

A man with white hair and classes sits at a drafting table with a paper plot and laptop computer. He holds a pencil in his left hand.
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John Stark
After 32 years, John C. Stark has retired from Illinois State University's theater faculty. He will remain as artistic director of the Illinois Shakespeare Festival until 2024.

The Stark era has come to an end for Illinois State University’s School of Theatre and Dance, where scenic designer and professor John Stark has taught his last class, painted his last set and mentored his last grad student.

After more than three decades of service to the university, Stark retired at the end of the semester. But the Twin Cities haven’t seen the last of him.

Stark first got “bit by the theater bug” as a junior in high school. He performed in a musical called “Wonderful Town.”

“I walked onstage and said, ‘skeet, scat, skiddly-doo’ a lot as a bit player,” he said. With a friend, Stark formed the Gemini Players in Schuyler, Nebraska. While studying radio and television at Wayne State College, Stark picked up a theater minor and spent summers at an outdoor theater in Indiana.

“We did four musicals a summer in a tent,” Stark said. “I did five seasons there and started out doing everything, acting and technical work. I noticed that they paid for the technical positions more than any of the other positions, and I had skills in that area — probably extending from my farm boy experiences.”

It was during this time Stark rediscovered a passion and talent for drawing. Thus, a scenic designer was born.

He attended graduate school, earning his master's degree at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and, for three years in the early 1980s, was an all-in-one technical theater professor at Illinois Wesleyan University. After six years as assistant scene designer and technical director at Arizona State University, Stark and his wife, acting professor Lori Adams, moved back to Bloomington-Normal.

“In 1991, I came here as a one-year, interim scene designer, which then turned into being here for 32 years,” he said.

As a young professor, Stark witnessed the tail end of formative theater department faculty careers of Jean Scharfenberg and John Kirk at ISU.

“It connected me to all that history,” Stark said. “I met a lot of people, going back to even Cal Pritner, who was the founder of the Illinois Shakespeare Festival. And, of course, my dean at the time was Al Goldfarb.”

Alvin Goldfarb joined ISU’s theater faculty in 1977 and was dean of fine arts for 10 years. He served as provost and vice president for academic affairs from 1998-2002, before moving into the presidency at Western Illinois University. He was pivotal in developing a relationship with Steppenwolf Theatre Company, whose original members were primarily ISU alums, and the construction of the Center for Performing Arts.

Stark elegantly shouldered that legacy while leaving his own mark on the School of Theatre and Dance, forging an exceptional reputation for graduate and undergraduate studies in stage design and technical theater.

How did he manage that?

“I think it’s really just facing one season at a time, one show at a time, and working to make it the best experience for the students to learn, but also to create a product that we’re proud of,” he said. “It establishes a baseline for them to take it from there into the profession. I think it’s all about creating an atmosphere where we’re striving for the best work that we can produce.”

While advances in technology have radically changed the field of technical theater — with LED fixtures almost wholly replacing conventional ones, and multimedia video walls taking the place of hand-built sets on Broadway — Stark has incorporated new technology into the curriculum, but he still teaches students to draft by hand, and designs with a pencil.

“The computer becomes an extension of your hand. It will do amazing things for you, but it is a tool for your creations,” he said. “I think the fundamental there is finding the way you create and how you think; that’s the important part.”

A man in a black dress shirt and khakis stands onstage gesturing to the audience
Courtesy
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Stark
Stark serving as emcee of Illinois Shakespeare Festival's annual "Bard Bash"

Looking back on his time with ISU and the Shakespeare festival, Stark recalled a few of his proudest accomplishments.

Among those were some of his earliest shows at Illinois State with then-lead directing faculty Calvin MacLean, who recently retired as theater department head at the University of Tennessee Knoxville.

“He and I came the same year to Illinois State,” Stark said. “Within about a year-and-a-half, we were teaching a collaborative class I was very proud of. We brought grad directors and designers together to make a very real connection about collaboration. That class morphed somewhat, but is still on the books.”

In 1994, Stark mounted “Sweeney Todd,” a massive musical, in the tiny Westhoff Theater. Stark’s “stunning set,” according to The Pantagraph, was a “dark, visual homage to London,” serving as an “intricate, integral part of the production.” Then there was his first-ever design for Illinois Shakespeare Festival in 1993, “Pericles.”

Directed by Doug Finlayson, who returns this season for “The Comedy of Errors,” “Pericles” featured the revered deaf actor Peter Cook, who performs using physical gestures, pantomime and American Sign Language.

“Doug had this amazing idea that Gower, who is the narrator, voiced what needed to be voiced for ‘Pericles,’ then Peter told the rest of the story with his body, with his signs and with his pantomime,” Stark said. “And it was magical.”

Stark served on the faculty of Illinois State University’s School of Theatre and Dance from 1991-2023. He was instrumental in the design and construction of Illinois Shakespeare Festival’s theater at Ewing Cultural Center, and became artistic director in 2018, leading the festival through the COVID-19 pandemic. He plans to remain at ISF through the 2024 season.

The 2023 Illinois Shakespeare Festival kicks off June 23. Tickets are on sale now at illinoisshakes.com.

Lauren Warnecke is a reporter at WGLT. You can reach Lauren at lewarne@ilstu.edu.
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